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OLD FAITH 



AND 



KEW THOUGHTS. 



BY 



EEY. J. B. GROSS. 

ATTTHOE OF " THE HEATHEN KELI6I0N IN ITS POPTJXAR AND SYMBOLICAL DEVELOP- 
MENT ;" OF "THE DOCTRINE OF THE LOED'S SUPPER, AS SET FORTH IN THE 
BOOK OF CONCORD, CRITICALLY EXAMINED AND ITS FALLACY DEMON- 
STRATED ;" OF " THE TEACHINGS OF PROVIDENCE, OR NEW LESSONS ON 
OLD SUBJECTS;" OF "THE PARSON ON DANCING AS IT IS TAUGHT 
IN THE BIBLE, AND WAS PRACTICED AMONG THE ANCIENT 
GREEKS AND ROMANS;" OF "THOUGHTS FOR THE FIRE- 
SIDE AND THE SCHOOL;" OF "THOUGHTS FOR THE 
FIRESIDE AND THE SCHOOL, SECOND SERIES," 
ETC., ETC. 



' Learning by study must be won ; 
*Twas ne'er entail'd from sire to son." — Gay. 



OF 






^ou. 



PHILADELPHIA: ^^^-^'^ WASH\^^ 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT & C6.^ 

1881. 



T 



(a 



16^ 



Copyright, 1880, by Kev. J. B. Gross. 



DEDICATION. 



Having written a volume of theological essays, entitled : 
" Old Faith and New Thoughts," of which the first — treating 
of "The Fall of Man," and, being especially distinguished 
for the undoubted soundness of its dogmatic views, is here 
singled out as eminently appropriate as a token of afiectionate 
regard for that most venerable and orthodox body — the Synod 
of Pennsylvania, properly known as " The German Evangel- 
ical Lutheran Synod of Pennsylvania, and Adjacent States," 
to whose kind attention and fraternal sympathy, it is, there- 
fore, earnestly commended : a confidence at once so rare and 
profound, I flatter myself to believe, its wonted courtesy and 
generous deportment will not fail readily to recognize and 
properly to appreciate ! 

Very respectfully, 

J. B. GROSS. 



PEEFACE. 



The following Essays — embracing various theological 
subjects : all of deep and general interest, are here re- 
spectfully offered to the honest thinkers, and diligent 
seekers after truth, among my fellow-citizens, whose 
minds are un warped by prejudice ; who never weary in 
the acquisition of useful knowledge ; and who — boldly re- 
jecting mere hearsay as well as all dogmas and opinions, 
which have nothing to recommend them but hoary age, or 
arbitrary prescription, and only yield assent to truth, in 
spite of opposition and reproach, on the one hand, or the 
alienation, perhaps scorn, of friends, on the other. To be 
true ; to seek truth ; and resolutely to defend it, is the 
delight as well as the duty of the philosopher, in whose 
ample, and, often, difficult fields of labor, the fragrant rose 
and the stinging brier flourish side by side ! 

It has constantly happened, in the course of human 
development, that many absurd and baneful notions ; 
many extravagant theories, or idle speculations, as well 
as false beliefs and evil practices, have sprung up, and 
been promulgated in society, thus either checking its 
progress, or impairing its welfare : it could not be other- 
wise in the earlier ages of mental growth, and the imma- 
ture experiences of mankind. A long course of training 

5 



Q PREFACE. 

and many trials, can alone enable us to sift the grain from 
the chaff, and to distinguish the true and the useful from 
the false and the worthless. The truth of the adage— 
that " experience makes perfect," is as thoroughly verified 
to-day as ever. 

If — in presenting this little volume to an appreciative 
Public, I shall enlist new allies in behoof of the truth ; 
if, in short — in this new attempt in literature, I shall be 
instrumental in increasing knowledge and uprooting error, 
while I inspire mankind with augmented zeal in the thrice 
noble cause of virtue and intelligence, I shall not deem 
my labor either vain, or my hopes disappointed. Besides, 
I shall have the exceeding satisfaction to know, that I 
have not thwarted but furthered, the evident design of 
my destiny ; that I have honestly tried to ameliorate the 
intellectual and moral condition of my fellow-beings ; and 
that — though my kindly efforts should not be, at once, 
recognized, their impress will live, and yet bear a harvest 
of golden ears, long after I shall have been gathered to 
my fathers ! Then, adieu, all ye noble and true, of all 
peoples and countries ! 

"Wilkes-Barre, Pa., October, 1880. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

I.— The Fall of Mak 11 

II. — God's Chakacter Yindicated against the 
Blasphemous Dogma of Preordination, 
OR the Arbitrary Doom of a Majority 
of Mankind to Everlasting Misery in 
the Torments of Hell .... 32 

III. — Churches must not Connive at the Sins 

OF THEIR Members . . . . .42 

IV. — Inspiration . . . . . . .55 

Introduction ....... 55 

Chapter 7.— Mis-Quotations .... 62 

Chapter II. — Contradictions of the New-Testa- 
ment Writers 64 

Chapter III. — Commentators and Sects, or the 

Ostensible Ambiguity of the Scriptures . . 67 
Chapter IV. .70 

V. — The Perversion of the Human Will as 
taught in the Augsburg Confession: 
AND Orthodox Creeds Generally . . 75 

Preface .75 

Chapter I. — The Nature of the Perversion of 
the Human Will . . . . . .78 

Chapter II. — The Origin of the Perversion of 

the Human Will 80 

7 



8 CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Chapter III. — Keference of the Augsburg Con- 
fession to St. Augustine for the Identification 
of this Doctrine ...... 82 

Chapter IV. — Reference of the Augsburg Con- 
fession in its Eighteenth Article to St. Paul 
(1 Corinthians ii. 14) for the Proof of this 
Doctrine . . . . . . . .84 

Chapter V. — The Restoration of Mankind to 
their Pristine Integrity, as taught in the 
Eighteenth Article of the Augsburg Con- 
fession, and in the Fifth Chapter of the 
Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, from the 
Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Verse, inclu- 
sively 86 

Conclusion ........ 89 

VI. — Transubstantiation . . . . .91 

Preface ........ 91 

Chapter I. — The Dogma of Transubstantiation 
is Proof of Apostasy from the Truth of the 
Gospel ........ 92 

Chapter II. — By the ceremony of Transubstan- 
tiation, or the Ostensible Conversion of Bread 
and Wine in the Eucharist, the Priest assumes 
to make the God-Man,- Jesus Christ . . 95 

Chapter III. — The Worship or Adoration of 
Christ, "the Only-Begotten Son of God," 
under the Semblance of the Host, deified by 
the Consecration of the Priest ... 98 

Chapter IV. — The Dogma of Transubstantiation 
leads to the Crime of Cannibalism . . . 101 

Chapter V. — The Host, or God-Man, as taught 
in the Dogma of Transubstantiation, is liable 
to Corruption . . . . . . . 104 

VII. — The Rite of Confirmation .... 107 
Chapter I. — The Growth and Consequent, Con- 
comitant Changes, both of the Human Body 
and Mind 110 



CONTENTS. 9 

PAGE 

Chapter II. — From the Fact that our Thoughts 
vary with our Intellectual Growth and Psy- 
chical State, it follows that the Eite of Con- 
firmation — which is a Tacit Interdict of Per- 
sonal Kesearch into the Nature of our Faith, 
is a Manifest Violation of the Laws of Mind, 
and, hence, of the Laws of God . . .112 

Chapter III. — The Kite of Confirmation is based 
upon Much False Teaching, and, in so far, it 
is Wrong, and should he amended . . . 115 

Chapter IV. — The Conclusion . . . .119 

VIII. — The National Need of a Pre-Sepulcheal 

Inquisition 122 

IX. — Heathen Idolatry 132 

X. — Many Peoples, Many Saviors . . . 143 

XI.— Heaven 152 



OLD FAITH AND NEW THOUGHTS. 



X. 

THE FALL OF MAN. 



"The course of science is ever onward." — Kandolph 
Pre- Adamite Man." 



According to orthodox creeds, tlie so-called 
Fall of Man : of wMch an account is given in the 
third chapter of the Book of Genesis, had — it is 
said, its sad origin in the sin of Adam and Eve : 
the hypothetical progenitors of mankind. A 
recognition of this sin, and a belief in the trans- 
mission of its taint to the posterity of the guilty 
couple, underlies all Church-orthodoxy, and is, 
hence, at once the cause and the basis of the 
Christian system of redemption. 'Now the former 
failing to be true — as the sequel will show, the 
latter — considered as its inseparable sequence, 
must likewise cease to be any longer regarded as 
true, and, therefore, as untenable. 

Where Eden, or Paradise, was located, it would 

be vain to inquire, since — as will appear here- 

11 



12 THE FALL OF MAN. 

after, its existence is cleai-ly only a fiction. But 
the tragedy, taught to have been enacted in it, 
though it is simply the creation of a fertile and 
decidedly extravagant fancy, demands, on account 
of its high rank among the Shibboleths of doc- 
trinal theology, a concise yet careful scrutiny, to 
which, accordingly, the attention of the reader is 
respectfully invited. 

The scenery of this primeval Utopia, was 
neither very diversified nor very imposing, though 
it was distinguished by some extraordinary phy- 
tological features : such as, beside ordinary, or 
strictly normal fruit-trees, a couple of singular 
specimens of the Flora of those days, one of 
which was called " the tree of life ;" the other, 
" the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ;" 
probably a fig-tree or two ;* four ample rivers; 
a serpent of surpassing cunning ; the occasional 
promenades of Jehovah Elohim, that is — ^liter- 
ally, Jehovah Gods, "in the cool of the day;" 
and, finally, Adam and Eve, the erroneously as- 
sumed pristine pair of the human race, seem to 
have made up its entire landscape. It is, of course, 
to be taken for granted, that its sky was serene ; 
its sun bright ; its climate genial ; and its means 
of happiness at once exuberant, delicious, and 
exhaustless ! 



* The culprits " sewed fig-leaves together, and made them- 
selves aprohs." 



THE FALL OF MAN. 13 

As may be learned from the second chapter of 
the Book of Genesis, the Creator placed Adam 
in the garden of Eden, " to dress it, and to keep 
it," being allowed at the same time, '' freely to 
eat of every tree of the garden,"* with the single 
exception " of the tree of the knowledge of good 
and evil," of which he was positively forbidden 
to eat, and, besides, plainly given to understand, 
that '' in the day he should presume to eat of ir, 
he would sureli/ die J'' 

From the preceding facts, it is evident that the 
appearance of the prohibited fruit, played a prom- 
inent part in the no less famous than deplorable 
Eden-tragedy; and that if it had had simply the 
familiar semblance of plain, ordinary fruit, the 
Divine prohibition might easily enough — it seems, 
have been obeyed, but, unfortunately, the fair, 
longing Eve saw not only that the tree was good 
for food, but that likewise " it was pleasant to 
the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one 
wise." Alas, owing to the lovely aspect and 
enticing qualities of this wonderful fruit, the 
woman, in an evil hour, reaching forth her rash 
hand towards the fruit, as Milton writes, took of it 
and ate it, and then — good-naturedly, giving her 
husband of it, he also — credulous soul, ate it ! 

I^evertheless, left to herself. Eve would not — 

* " Every tree of the garden," comprised — according to 
Genesis, ii. 9, " every tree that was pleasant to the sight and 
good for food." 

2 



14 THE FALL OF MAN. 

it appears likely, have proved disobedient to the 
celestial warning, however potentl}^ tempting the 
fruit might have been in the charm of its looks, 
or the raarvelonsness of its qualities, if the ser- 
pent, above alluded to, had not interfered and 
magnified the allurements of the temptation to 
sin, by his wily and winning rhetoric, in which 
he may be supposed to have been an adept, as 
" he was more subtile than any beast of the field." 
Addressing himself to the woman, he inquires — 
with an air of innocence, " Yea, hath God said, 
Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden ?" 
She briefly related to him what God had said to 
her and Adam about the forbidden tree, and its 
fruit, etc., to which the sly ophidian tempter thus 
peremptorily responded : " Ye shall not surely 
die ; for God does know, that in the day ye eat 
thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye 
shall be as gods — Elohim, knowing good and 
evil." 

Such was the occasion and the nature of the 
Fall of Man, and such is the bug-bear, called 
Original sin! — Before we notice the dififerent 
kinds of punishment, which were inflicted upon 
the guilty parties in this sad drama in Eden-life, 
Elohim and the serpent claim a closer acquaint- 
ance, and a fuller elucidation : the one gravely 
warning against the use of the noxious fruit, the 
other persistently luring on to fearless and hearty 
participation of it. 



THE FALL OF MAN. 15 

Eloliim is the plural of Eloali, and means gods : 
the gods, therefore, cautioned the inmates of 
Eden against eating the fruit of the tree of " the 
knowledge of good and evil." The names Je- 
hovah Elohim — used either conjointly, or singly, 
as is the case with the latter, I may further re- 
mark, are frequently employed synonymously in 
the Old Testament, showing conclusively that 
heathen and Jewish literature, pervading the 
voluminous pages of that sacred book, is a 
m.edley, which — in an age so remote from the 
times, in which it originated — as the present is, 
spurns every attempt we might make, to trace 
its authenticity to its true sources. This much, 
however, may be affirmed with certainty, that 
the Jews — in the observance of their ostensibly 
normal worship, were strictly monotheists, or 
worshipers of one God, and thoroughly detested 
polytheism, or the worship of gods.* The name 
Elohim, moreover — it may be affirmed on correct 
exegetical principles, is not a pluralis excelleniis or 
majestatis, that is, a name implying excellence or 
majesty, as some commentators teach, and or- 
thodox rabbins profess to believe, but the plain, 
undoubted designation of the plural noun gods, 
and, hence, indicative of a heathen origin of this 

* By ostensibly normal worship, I mean the monotheism, as 
it is taught in ihe presumptive Mosaic law. As a nation, the 
Jews had a marked proclivity towards polytheism, down to 
the Babylonian captivity. 



16 THE FALL OF MAN. 

anomalous and remarkable Eden-fiction : God, 
considered and adored as the Supreme Being, 
had, of course, nothing to do with it. The idea, 
that he could have had anything to do with it, 
implies a crass and vulgar anthropomorphism, of 
which Christians — claiming to he intelligent, 
should feel profoundly ashamed ! 

The serpent next deserves, at least, a brief at- 
tention ; for his part in this whimsical transac- 
tion, was no less marked than it was decisive. 
Differing from all other serpents that have been 
ever known to the researches in scientific zoology, 
this wonderful Eden-reptile speaks and reasons 
strictly ad hominem, that is, like a human being, 
and, boldly confronting the Elohim with power- 
ful antagonistic arguments, he easily triumphs 
by his rare audacity and consummate shrewdness 
over all opposition both human and Divine ! 

Impartially considering this subject, do we ob- 
serve anything in the form or the mythic endow- 
ments of this serpent, that should warrant us to 
recognize in it the presence or the devices of the 
Devil ? Does the history of the Fall say that 
the serpent was the Devil in disguise ? or that — 
according to the author of " Paradise Lost," 
" the enemy of mankind, enclosed in a serpent," 
spoke and reasoned thus ? I^ot a word, not even 
a syllable, do we find to this effect ! Hence the 
once generally accepted creed, that the Devil was 
incarnate in the form of the serpent, and tempted 



THE FALL OF MAN. 17 

Adam and Eve to the commission of the grievous 
offense, known and still largely bewailed under 
the name Original Sin, is simply a pitiable fiction, 
never even hinted at in any of the canonical books 
of the Bible.* How orthodoxy in its blindness 
or its craftiness — still shamefully and halefulhj 
teaching its credulous adherents to see the Devil 
in the Eden-serpent, can any longer look honest, 
unsophisticated people in the face, without blink- 
ing, or the blush of shame, implies a greater de- 
gree of miraculous ingenuity than would the in- 
carnation of the Devil in the reptilian body of a 
serpent. — The sad, punitive scene — the scene of 
a solemn, and : it is to be presumed, righteous 
judgment, now opens before us. Alas, it is dooms- 
day in Paradise, and the fancied heaven on earth, 
has speedily and disastrously come to an end ! 

ISTo sooner had the appalling transgression — 
as the most of us have been taught to regard it, 
been consummated, than the juvenile offenders: 
it is stated, " hid themselves from the presence of 

* It is very doubtful whether even an apocryphal book 
advances so preposterous an idea ; for the book, called the 
*' Wisdom of Solomon," ascribing the origin of death to " the 
envy of the Devil," clearly refers to the death of Abel, and 
not — as by mistake, is intimated on page 28, in the " Thoughts 
for the Fireside and the School: Second Series," to the Fall. 
The same remark holds good with regard to 2 Corinthians, ii. 
3, in which St. Paul does not say that the Devil tempted Eve, 
but that the sevpent beguiled her : it is to be taken for granted, 
that what he 'plainly says, he simply means. 

2* 



18 THE FALL OF MAN. 

the Lord God among the trees of the garden." 
Upon inquiry, Why they had hidden themselves, 
the reason assigned by Adam, was, that he had 
been afraid because " he was naked," and " had 
heard God's voice in the garden." 

The hypothetical progenitor of mankind, clearly 
prevaricated a little in his reply to the inquisition 
of his dread judge ; for it was not the nude state , 
in which he was, that made him afraid of an 
offended God, but the keen sense of guilt, which 
smote his conscience, when he heard the omin- 
ous voice of the Deity, and which the eating of the 
forbidden fruit, had called forth in his troubled, 
recreant soul. Such having been essentially the 
case, the assumed Eden -transgression had the 
salutary effect to carry self-condemnation into 
the bosom of guilt : a most important lesson in 
human discipline, without which moral growth 
is impossible; for to hate and flee evil, we must 
know and fear it. 

Behold, the eyes of the inmates of Paradise, 
had now — according to the serpent's prophecy 
" been opened," and they had consequently : in 
consistency with serpent-logic, become like gods 
— Elohim, knowing " good and evil." God grant 
that more such eye-opening catastrophes may 
speedily be brought about among the blind and 
hypocritical devotees of a false faith, and a no 
less disgraceful than a vulgar and hateful super- 
stition. 



THE FALL OF MAN. 19 

The attempt of an exculpation, on the part of 
Adam and Eve, after the infraction of the Divine 
commandment, was strictly in accordance with 
the usual subterfuge to which guilt resorts, in 
order to escape, or, at least, to mitigate, just pun- 
ishment : the man charged the woman with his 
sin ; the woman hurled back the charge upon 
the machinations of the serpent; the serpent — 
wisely reticent, said nothing ! Clearly, reader, 
the maxim, " That honesty is the best policy," 
was unknown, or, at least, grossly neglected, 
among the much boasted exalted attributes of 
primeval man. 

The guilty triad are now successively arraigned 
and summarily sentenced. First, the serpent ap- 
pears at the awful bar. His doom : seemingly, 
sufficiently dreadful, was " to be cursed above all 
cattle, and above every beast of the field :" upon 
his helly, he was thenceforth to go, and to eat dust, 
as his stated food, " all the days of his life." — 
The subtile tempter, having offered no plea in 
extenuation of his crime, I will offer some facts 
in relation to his punishment, which it is necessary 
to know, in order justly to appreciate the story 
of the Eden -fiction. 

The punishment of the marvelously endowed 
reptile, was — as we have just learned, two-fold, 
and was to last " all the days of his life :" he was, 
besides, to go upon his belli/, and instead of subsist- 
ing upon his usual aliment, simply " to eat dust." 



20 THE FALL OF MAN. 

Serpents — I may here remark, have never been 
known to have any other method of locomotion, 
but that upon their bellies, notwithstanding the 
text plainly premises the contrary, and, hence, 
that part of the sentence, involving the procum- 
bent posture of the serpent, cannot have been of 
a punitive nature, or an evil : a fact, that de- 
cidedly convicts the author of this grotesque 
piece of literature, of a most grave and unpar- 
donable ignorance of the first principles in this 
important branch of natural history, as well as 
of a glaring untruth in the premises. 

An able writer in Chambers's Encyclopaedia, 
thus concisely and appropriately defines and il- 
lustrates this interesting subject of ophidian loco- 
motion.—" The body and tail" — of the serpent, 
he says, " are covered with scales, the head often 
with plates. The vertebrae and ribs are extremely 
numerous, a pair of ribs being attached to each 
vertebra throughout the whole length of the 
body. Some serpents have more than 300 pair 
of ribs. The ribs not only serve to give form to the 
body, and aid in respiration, but are also organs of 
locomotion. — Each rib is joined by a slender carti- 
lage and a set of short muscles to one of the scales 
of the abdomen. A serpent moves by means of 
the ribs and these scales, which take hold on the 
surface over which it passes, and in this way it 
can glide — often very rapidly, along the ground, 
or in the branches of trees ; and many species 



THE FALL OF MAN. 21 

climb trees with great facility, gliding up the 
trunk as if they moved on level ground,"* etc. 
Eeader, this does not much look as if the prone 
posture of the serpent was the result of a judicial 
taint ! 

As to the food of serpents, the same distin- 
guished writer thus expresses himself: "They 
live chiefly on insects and other very small ani- 
mals." " The true serpents," he continues, " live 
on larger prey, which they swallow entire, some 
of them — as the boas, crushing it by constriction 
in the coil of their muscular body,"t etc. 

Hence it evidently follows that, if the Eden- 
serpent had to subsist upon dust, as his sole food, 
for the rest of his life, his crime did not vitiate 



* Here we have respectable evidence that serpents climb 
trees, but where is the evidence that devils do such a thing? 
The ophidian propensity for climbing trees, I have had an 
opportunity of witnessing in a reptile of this kind, which I 
casually found stretched out on a limb of an apple-tree, wist- 
fully eying a bird's nest several feet above it. — Beside the scan- 
sorial feat of the snake, just noticed : a species of the Black- 
Snake, composing the genus Coluber^ the Boidje, or Boas, for 
example, are noted for their habit of ascending to the lower 
limbs of trees, where — their powerful prehensile tails, firmly 
infolding the trunks, they lie in wait for the passing prey, 
which they at once treacherously seize, and pitilessly crush in 
their fatal, constrictive coils. Thus much as to climbing 
snakes. As to climbing Devils. — I may simply add, demon- 
ology — outside of orthodoxy, is profoundly silent ! 

f The pseudo-serT^ents differ from the true ophidise, by the 
absence of a sternum, shoulder, etc. — G. 



22 'J'HE FALL OF MAN. 

his brood — if he had any, but was limited in its 
penal eifects to the individual existence of the 
great criminal; for modern investigations in 
ophidian habits, have totally failed to discover 
any traces of dust-eating serpents.* 

E^ext, curious, junketing Eve — ay, poor mother 
JEve, received her sentence. Her penalty wsls " to 
bring forth children in sorrow," and " to be ruled 
over by her husband," etc. It is, undoubtedly, 
only in a low stage of civilization, and in parts 
of the globe in which woman is more the slave 
than the companion of man, where such rude 
thoughts can have originated. One thing is cer- 
tain : as the human race shall advance in refine- 
ment, and, consequently, attain to a truer esti- 
mate of woman's worth, she will not be ruled 
over: by dint of mere strength, by the husband, 
but loved and honored by him on principles of 
mutual respect and kindness ; and, this part of 
her sentence — supposing it perpetuated, must be 
deemed mainly confined to the barbarous phases 
of society, and, therefore, impracticable, as well 
as no longer to be connived at, in an intelligent 
social state. 



* Before I dismiss the notice of the serpent's punishment, 
I will only further remark, that the woman's seed has often 
bruised a serpent's head, but never yet the Devil's head, and 
that only a serpent, not the Devil, bites people in their 
heels. Whence it follows, that the writer of this myth, meant 
a serpent when he said serpent, and not the Devil ! 



THE FALL OF MAN. 23 

As to the remaining part of the punishment 
awarded to Eve : " sorrow in childbirth," it is 
really no penal infliction at all ; for many a child- 
birth is accompanied by an ineffable maternal 
delight. Besides, St. Paul attributes a saving 
power to this important function in woman's 
destiny ; for he writes, in the second chapter and 
the fifteenth verse of his First Epistle to Timothy, 
that the woman, provided she should be other- 
wise eminent for piety and good works, " shall 
be saved in child-bearing.'' Whence it undeni- 
ably follows that no especial efforts of salvation 
need be put forth in her behoof, and that, conse- 
quently. Eve's penalty was tantamount to a bless- 
ing, even to that of salvation itself ! 

But admitting — what it would be vain to deny, 
that the act of parturition is usually accompa- 
nied by pain and often much suffering, the fact is 
not owing to imputed guilt, but to an inherent 
and inseparable condition of this emphatically 
crucial part of maternity. So far, therefore, 
from being an evidence of a penal infliction, the 
same distressing phenomena are witnessed, more 
or less, among all ranks of animated nature, 
though no person of common sense is silly 
enough, or hardy enough, to attribute them to a 
taint, inherited from brute ancestors, implicated 
in the fabled Fall of Man ! 

Adam's doom — at first blush, appears eminently 
appalling, but it is only really dreadful in the ap- 



24 THE FALL OF MAN. 

prehension of a lazy and effeminate Asiatic, such, 
as was, doubtless, the author of this extraordi- 
nary little romance. It consisted of the follow- 
ing heterogeneous and decidedly pastoral penal- 
ties. First, " for his sake the ground was cursed, 
and, thenceforth, bore him, beside the cereal 
grains, ample harvests of thorns and thistles;" 
and, second, his bread he was condemned " to 
eat with sorrow, and in the sweat of his face," 
all the days of his life. I will only add, that the 
Lord God in Eden cannot have been the enlight- 
ened Christian's God of the nineteenth century : 
a God whose character is not that of a furious 
IlTero or an evil demon, but of a long-suffering 
and gracious Father. Hence the puerile, ridicu- 
lous, and blasphemous portraiture, which is here 
given of God, is alone sufficient to brand this 
inordinate revery of an Eden-drama as the idle 
tale of a morbid and baleful fancy. 

The various features in Adam's punishment 
claim a further concise and impartial scrutiny. 
Thorns and thistles — it may be remarked, must 
have been included in the primeval vegetable 
kingdom, when the Creator — reviewing it, '^saw 
that it was good." If then thorns and thistles 
were good, how could they be of a punitive na- 
ture, and the symbols of a curse in Adam's sen- 
tence ? The idea is extremely absurd. Besides, 
weeds — as every intelligent agriculturist knows, 
may be profitably employed as fertilizers of the 



THE FALL OF MAN. 25 

soil, while the careful, neat husbandman, whose 
fields are disencumbered by noxious plants, may 
justly feel proud of the favorable contrast which 
his rural pursuit must make with that of his slug- 
gish, slovenly neighbor, whose acres are overrun 
and clogged with the unsightly growth. As to 
sorrow — one of the penal elements in Adam's 
sentence, it is unavoidable in the life of finite 
beings, and, besides, properly used, it is neither 
more nor less an evil than joy : both are essen- 
tial among the conditions of a normal develop- 
ment of mankind. That Adam — presuming that 
such a person has really existed, should — without 
exception, always have eaten his bread in sorrow 
is incredible, and is simply to be considered as an 
exaggeration, or a hyperbole of speech. 

In respect to the penalty — dooming him to eat 
his bread '^ in the sw^eat of his face," that w^as a 
blessing rather than a curse ; for such an industrial 
seasoning of our food contributes not only largely 
to our health as w^ell as manly vigor and inde- 
pendence, but also constitutes an important ele- 
ment in our civilization, while it is the sure basis 
of much of our individual and social happiness. 
Instead, therefore, of continuing — as formerly, 
'' to dress and to keep" the Eden-garden, and 
luxuriously bathing in the soft, balmy zephyrs of 
the nascent Paradise, Adam — according to the 
narrative, became a husbandman — and thus, un- 
consciously, laid the foundation of the secular 

3 



26 THE FALL OF MAN. 

greatness and intellectual eminence of man- 
kind. 

Our next inquiry is, Had the Eden-drama any 
vitiating eiFect upon the rest of the human race ? 
Or, in other words. Is the fabled Eden-sin im- 
puted to the assumed or putative descendants of 
Adam and Eve ? Orthodox creeds unanimously 
teach such hereditary taint, but does the Bible- 
teaching v^arrant such a doctrine ? The history 
of the Eden-couple neither asserts nor implies 
so serious and disastrous a result ; a fact w^hich 
must be deemed exceedingly strange as well as 
gravely wanting in fidelity of duty, if we are all 
personally implicated in Adam's Fall. 

Adverting to the New-Testament for informa- 
tion on this dominant article in orthodox creeds, 
we fail to find a text which can be regarded as 
plainly and positively declarative of such an im- 
putation. The salient passage to which the 
sticklers for a transmission of Adam's guilt to 
his race appeal for proof is contained in the fifth 
chapter and the twelfth verse of the Epistle of 
St. Paul to the Romans. The Apostle does not 
say in this place that we are all sinners inasmuch 
as we are participants in Adam's sin, but that 
" we had all sinned," or are sinners, that is, pec- 
cable beings, and die because peccable beings are 
finite beings, and — of course, doomed to dissolu- 
tion. But suppose the Apostle's words should 
admit the usual orthodox construction, little reli- 



THE FALL OF MAN. 27 

ance — I regret to say, can be placed upon his 
opinion in this weighty matter, as he is unfor- 
tunately guilty of a very grave error, directly in- 
volving their integrity ; for he derives the origin 
of death from Adam's sin, whereas myriad ages 
prior to that assumed event, death had reigned 
coextensively with the life upon the globe, as the 
interesting and instructive science of paleontology 
irrefragably demonstrates : this single fact proves 
the Apostle to have been fallible, and the sup- 
posed inspiration under which he wrote an evi- 
dent fallacv ! 

Besides, this same Apostle — guided simply, no 
doubt, by the dictates of common sense, clearly 
and emphatically teaches the inviolate normal in- 
tegrity of mankind in the fourteenth and fifteenth 
verses of the second chapter of the Epistle just 
quoted, when he asserts that the Gentiles,* who 
have not the law — the Mosaic law, doing bi/ na- 
ture the things contained in the law, they — not 
having the law, are a law unto themselves, show- 
ing the works of the law written in their hearts, 
their conscience also bearing witness, and their 
thoughts meanwhile accusing or else excusing 
one another, etc. Here — it is gratifying to learn, 
no dogma is laid down, implying Adam's taint 
in the human race, and man is, accordingly, 

* This word is a common noun and ought to be written like 
one : gentiles. 



28 THE FALL OF MAN. 

represented as responsible for his conduct only so 
far as he is a/ree agent. Whence it inevitably fol- 
lows that he is genetically, absohitely independent 
of all extraneously inherited guilt or corruption ! 

The preceding paragraph is strikingly corrob- 
orated in the ninth chapter and sixth verse of 
the Book of Genesis, where man — even after the 
Noachian deluge — is described as still retaining 
the image of God ! The following are the sacred 
writer's emphatic words : " Whoso sheddeth 
man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed : 
for in the image of God made he man." It suffices 
to say that, where the image of God is, the 
orthodox doctrine of total depravity must, of 
course, be held to be heretical and untenable. 

If — as we are taught to believe — the Christian 
system of redemption is founded upon the as- 
sumed Fall of Man, and expressly intended to 
neutralize its pernicious effiicts, it is matter of 
profound astonishment that Christ never referred 
to the fact. What, to have come all the way from 
Heaven to redeem us from Adam's Fall, and yet 
never to say a word to us about his Fall, is in- 
credible and amounts incontrovertibly to a com- 
plete refutation of that blasphemous dogma, 
charging God with the heinous sin of making 
the innocent suffer for the guilty ! 

But does not the third chapter of the Gospel, 
according to St. John, premise the Fall of man- 
kind in Adam, inasmuch as Christ there requires 



THE FALL OF MAN. 29 

a new birth of the converts to his religion ? Suf- 
fice it to say, that the heathens having renounced 
their former faith, and embraced the Old-Testa- 
m.ent religion, or joined the Jewish Church, they 
were baptized, and this ritual observance, to- 
gether with that change of creed, was designated 
the new-birth. What the Jews required of the hea- 
then proselyte to their Church, Christ required of 
the Jewish proselyte, as a preparatory qualifica- 
tion of a true discipleship in his Church. But he 
never even hinted to Mcodemus that he must be 
born again because Adam had sinned, or that the 
human race is damned on account of his Fall ! 

It is necessary, once more, to advert to the 
doctrine, that the Devil, in the disguise of the 
serpent, tempted the putative first-parents of man- 
kind to sin. As a proof of it, orthodox believers 
invite attention to the forty-fourth verse of the 
eighth chapter of the Gospel just referred to, 
where the Devil is called " a murderer from the 
beginning;" "a liar, and the father of lies." 
Now, there was positively no lying in Paradise 
on the part of the serpent; for what he had said, 
proved to be strictly true : Adam and Eve did not 
die on the day of transgression, as he had fore- 
told. Besides, no murder was committed on the 
occasion of Adam and Eve's disobedience, and, 
therefore, Christ cannot be meant to say so. On 
the contrary, it was entirely in harmony with the 
popular Jewish belief to teach, that the Devil 

3* 



30 THE FALL OF MAN. 

instigated Cain to slay his brother, and, more- 
over, to he to Elohim when — being asked by 
him, where his murdered brother was, he per- 
fidiously answered : " I know not." Behold Cain 
here both a murderer and a liar under diabolical 
influence, according to a grossly vulgar supersti- 
tion of the Chosen People of God ! Hence, we 
likewise find the E^ew-Testament — reflecting and 
perpetuating this ridiculous and disgraceful doc- 
trine, full of instances of demoniacal possessions. 

But why should I extend these investigations of 
the so-called Fall of Man, any further? Adam 
and Eve cannot have been the reputed progeni- 
tors of the human race, for the simple and very 
cogent reason, that man existed upon the globe, 
according to the undoubted teachings of geo- 
logical science, millennial ages anterior to the 
assumed era of Adam and Eve's existence !* 
No point in science is, in fact, better established 
than the evidence, that Adam and Eve are mythic 
personages, and that, hence, the human race stands 
absolutely in no genetic relation to them ! 

In conclusion, let us suppose: what is by no 
means the case, that the Eden-narrative is true, 
and that Adam and Eve really sinned. Is not 
sin inseparable from the life of a finite, free- 
agent ? Besides, sin has never been the greatest 

* Archaeological researches incontrovertibly lead to analo- 
gous results. 



THE FALL OF MAN. 31 

evil in human conduct, but a want of repentance 
of sin ! Moreover, without the possibility of sin- 
ning, man would be altogether incapable of moral 
development, or growth in virtue. Make sin im- 
possible, and man is ethically and intellectually 
no better than a stock or stone ! Sin is the very 
basis ; the absolute condition of a higher stage of 
human progress, and a final, ameliorated, happy 
life. 

Such being the result of our investigation, 
what, finally, was the design of the Eden-episode ? 
Probably to account for the introduction of the 
Iron-Age among mankind, which was so radically 
difierent from a previously existing Golden-Age — 
fancied by poets, and dreamed of by philosophers, 
during which the human race was supposed to 
have been supremely happy. Labor was then need- 
less ; sickness was unknown ; and everywhere 
peace and good- will reigned triumphantly. Alas, 
all was changed now, and changed for the worse, 
the discontented writer seems to have thought. 
What wonderful catastrophe could have caused 
this great and grievous reverse in human destiny ? 
The solution, at which he evidently arrives, was 
— in short, the marvelous incidents, we have con- 
templated in the famous Eden-tragedy: hence- 
forth, the crumbling corner-stone only — as must 
be evident, not of a saving faith, but simply, alas, 
of a, false and degrading orthodoxy, whose doom 
is thus sealed and inevitable ! 



II. 
GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED 

AGAINST THE BLASPHEMOUS DOGMA OE PKE- 
ORDINATION, OK THE AEBITRARY DOOM OF 
A MAJORITY OF MANKIND TO EVERLASTING 
MISERY IN THE TORMENTS OF HELL. 



It would be futile to inquire what the ancients 
thought upon the dreary and ill-defined subject 
of future punishment, its nature, or its duration, 
simply with the view to enable us properly to 
appreciate its justice, its reasonableness, or its 
utility. It is eminently a question which com- 
mon sense alone can adequately scan and appro- 
priately decide. All creeds — without exception, 
which inculcate the atrocious and blasphemous 
doctrine of an endless hell-punishment, are the 
grotesque and inhuman hallucinations of a bar- 
barous and revengeful age, when fierce and un- 
relenting passions predominate over the dictates 
of reason and the generous forbearance of an 
injury. As the people then were in their be- 
havior towards each other, they naturally inferred 
the behavior of the gods to be towards the human 
race — rude, despotic, implacable ! The Jews — 
at no time very remarkable for extensive literary 
32 



GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 33 

culture, or profound research, never attained to 
more than mystic glimpses into the shadowy 
realm of spirits, and their rewards and punish- 
ments — ordained in their theocratic institutions, 
were emphatically and literally confined to the 
present evanescent and changeful life. On the 
contrary, the ITew-Testament oracles — more pry- 
ing or more lucky, peer beyond the narrow bounds 
of time, and contemplate with equal clearness and, 
probably, with equal certainty, the pains of hell 
and the joys of heaven ! 

Endless punishment, or penal suffering in Hell, 
has the revolting peculiarity that — according to 
received orthodox ideas, it is pre-eminently ar- 
bitrary; unameliorative ; and, therefore, unqual- 
ifiedly cruel as well as a refiex facsimile of the 
judicial atrocities, known here only to human 
tyrants, or the heartless intolerance of haughty, 
bigoted priests. To put the juridical adminis- 
tration of a holy God in the future world, on a 
parity with that of unfeeling, brutal humanity 
in this, is, undoubtedly, bad enough, but the 
thought that such a belief, at once so glaringly 
disparaging and blasphemous as this is, of the 
righteous character of the Deity, is still cher- 
ished and propagated within the hallowed pale 
of the Christian Church, in this enlightened and 
scientific age, would be absolutely incredible, if 
history and current events did not amply and 
sadly verify it. 



34 GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 

Punishments should be disciplinary, corrective, 
healing, saving, otherwise they are only hurtful, 
or — at least, useless, and a mere display of ca- 
price or a propensity for a fiendish malignity. 
And such punishments, like these, God, the good 
God, administers in hell, according to hoary in- 
fallible orthodox belief! Why does he thus deal 
with his weak, erring children ? Is he afraid that 
feeble mortals might subvert his power or tarnish 
his glory, if he should suffer them to go at large, 
and to take their chance in the race of a moral 
development, irrevocably marked out and clearly 
defined by himself? Or is revenge — on account 
of a little short-coming : perhaps a still unre- 
pented sin; a frivolous or a grievous folly, so 
grateful to his soul, or the cries and wailings of 
the damned so sweetly harmonious to his ears, 
that he can be happy only, nay, ineffably blessed, 
while they — the beings rtiade in his image, are in 
endless, unmitigated torment? Such is Calvin- 
ism in its orthodox culmination : impious in con- 
ception ; false and calumnious in utterance. 

In the decidedly unprecedented doctrine of 
preordination, ideas are advanced of God and 
future retribution, which are — without a doubt, 
the most glaringly shocking, blasphemous, and 
monstrous, which a false and sadly debauched 
theology has ever engendered from inflamed and 
raving brains. What crying insult against God, 
whom we are taught to address in our prayers as 



GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 35 

— " Oar Father F'' What a flagrant abuse or de- 
nial of the dictates of common sense, and the 
common sympathies inherent in human nature ! 
But let us scrutinize a little more closely what is 
the precise nature of the grim and repulsive ef- 
fusions of a well-developed and thoroughly ma- 
tured expression of an infallible orthodox, Cal- 
vinistic preordination-confession of faith. 

Deriving his information principally from the 
writings of Calvin and the decisions of the fa- 
mous Synod of Dort, Buck, in his " Theological 
Dictionary," thus concisely imparts to the reader 
the harsh and gloomy views taught in them on 
the doctrine of preordination, already partially 
intimated in the preceding paragraphs : " They 
maintain," he writes, " that God hath chosen a 
certain number of the fallen race of Adam in 
Christ, before the foundation of the world, unto 
eternal glory, according to his immutable pur- 
pose, and of his free grace and love, without the 
least foresight of faith, good works, or any con- 
ditions performed by the creature ; and that the 
• rest of mankind he was pleased to jpass hy, and 
ordain : induced solely, writes Mosheim, * by his 
own good pleasure and free-will,' to dishonor and 
wrath., for their sins, to the praise of his vindictive 
justice."* 

* Froude, in " Short Studies on Greo-t Subjects," thus pith- 
ily expresses himself: " To represent man as sent into the 



36 GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 

The dogma of unconditional decrees, which 
is here inculcated, claims to be founded upon 
Bible-teaching; nay, to be most saliently and 
emphatically the Word of God! Could I endorse 
this claim as true, I would henceforth repudiate 
the Bible, and unhesitatingly renounce it as a 
myth, a mockery, and a blasphemy. My God, 
the God of Jesus, owned and adored by all sane 
and untrammeled minds, is not this inhuman, 
j)artial God; this bloody, capricious tyrant, but 
a just, a reasonable, a benign God, proclaimed 
everywhere as such in the laws and government 
of the universe. Alas, as long as such orthodox 
abominations sully and defame the Christian re- 
ligion, it is simply ludicrous to foster foreign mis- 
sions, and recklessly waste millions of dollars in 
the conversion of ^' the poor, benighted heathens," 
whose religious creed has never been desecrated 



world under a curse, as incurably wicked — wicked by the 
constitution of bis flesb, and wicked by eternal decree, as 
doomed, unless exempted by special grace whicb he cannot 
merit, or by any effort of his own obtain ; to live in sin while 
he remains on earth , and to be eternally miserable when he 
leaves it ; to represent him as born unable to keep the com- 
mandments, yet as justly liable to everlasting punishment for 
breaking them, is alike repugnant to reason and conscience, 
and turns existence into a hideous nightmare." In another 
part of the same admirable Work, he adds : "The Calvinist 
preacher consigns the heretic without a shudder — which he 
seems to think, exceeds the atrocities of the Holy Office of 
Seville, to an eternity of flames !" 



GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 37 

and defiled by such savagely inhuman, and exe- 
crable fanaticism ! 

Amonff the ancient heathens of classic renown 
— it may be remarked, it was only in consequence 
of the extravagant license of the poets that Hades 
was endowed with relentless judges, hideous fu- 
ries, fiery rivers, the monster Cerberus : porter of 
hell, etc., or the Infernal Regions with the inflic- 
tion of penal torments. Cicero calls such fanci- 
ful notions " silly fables," and openly disavows 
them. According to Ovid, the Pythagoreans 
peremptorily rejected the vulgar stories of fu- 
ture punishment as " vain terrors." Seneca — 
the Latin Socrates, believing conformably to the 
foregoing philosophic skepticisms, absolutely re- 
jected the idea of hadean torments, as mere 
fables and idle terrors, invented by the facetious 
fancies of the jocund or trifling poets already 
noticed : " The dead man," he pointedly asserts, 
" is affected with no evils."* — Adverting to the 
Stoics, we find that they acknowledged an impe- 
rial head of the universe, and maintained that 
the world is governed by laws, but that they 
allowed no proper sanctions : ;penal sanctions^ of 

* The Roman sage means no arbitrarily inflicted evils, or 
none not purely ethic retributions ! He evidently teaches 
man's free-agency ; a GofZ-constituted free-agency, whence it 
follows, that man alone is the absolute arbiter of his destiny, 
and that, consequently, there can be no hell-torment, much 
less an eternal hell- torment. 

4 



38 GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 

rewards and punishments to enforce obedience 
to those laws, but such as necessarily flow from 
the nature of the actions themselves. They 
affirmed, that their own virtues were the only 
rewards of the good and virtuous, and their own 
vices the only punishments of the wicked. Hence 
they resented the idea of fear or dread of God, 
as arbitrary punisher of sin in Hades, " as base 
and superstitious." — Epictetus, the eminent Stoic 
philosopher, whose sentiments on this interesting 
subject, may be justly supposed to reflect those of 
every intelligent heathen, thus pertinently re- 
marks : " God has given us faculties, by which 
we may bear every event without being de- 
pressed or broken by it ; but like a good prince, 
and a true father, has rendered them incapable of 
restraint, compulsion, or hindrance, and entirely 
dependent on our own pleasure ; nor has he re- 
served a power even to himself, of hindering or 
restraining them." — Indeed, the learned men of 
classic antiquity, seem to have universally be- 
lieved, that mankind indiscriminately would 
have a chance of future happiness; and that all 
ideas of election or reprobation were positively un- 
known in their common-sense apprehension of a 
future life. Their creed of our immortal destiny, 
was appropriately based entirely on the moral 
nature of man, and the natural inexorable se- 
quences of a good or an evil life : not on the 
pains of hell-fire, but in the approval or con- 



GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 39 

dem nation of an appreciative and ever- watchful 
conscience !* 

What a wide and wonderful contrast we dis- 
cover here between heathen and Calvinistic ideas 
of true, juridical principles ! Who — after this, 
would not rather take lessons of the sages of 
Greece and Rome, naj, of heathen sages of any 
land or people, on the nature of Divine justice, 
than sit at the feet of sullen and unfeelino* Cal- 
vinism, false and repellent in its aspect as it is 
capricious and blasphemous in its conception and 
intent ? May all sensible men speedily conspire 
for its destruction, amen ! 

According to the testimony of all enlightened 
and unprejudiced minds, God rewards or pun- 
ishes mankind in this world, on strictly exclus- 
ively moral principles, and can, therefore, as a 
just and good God — the same then as now, gov- 
ern them in no other way hereafter : this way 
only — the sole, (xoc?-preordained and immutable 
way, is ameliorative, soul-developing and soul- 
satisfying. For man in the present life, is — by 
the very condition of free- volition, inherent in 
his nature, as invariable experience teaches, re- 
buked or approved only in so far as he is self- 
determining, or enjoys uncontrolled spontaneity. 
This being conceded, why then should he deviate 



* Leland's " Advantage and Necessity of the Christian 
Bevelation," etc. 



40 GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 

from this established policy, or method in man's 
moral training or correction in the future world ? 
Can any tenable reason be assigned for the neces- 
sity of a change in his administration of justice ? 
Is he a changeable God? Are Calvinists uncon- 
scious of the Apostle's plain, pointed assurance, 
that God — the judge of the world, is " tbe Father 
of lights, with whom is no variableness neither 
shadow of turning" ? Let, I pray, no one forget 
tbat man — in his punitive relations to his Maker, 
is pre-eminently in a course of moral training, 
which admits no interference of arbitrary, or des- 
potic penalties : all God's punishments, inflicted 
upon mankind, oh infatuated Calvinists, are sote- 
rialy only soterial, and, hence, an ameliorative 
discipline ! 

But why should I further combat the folly and 
presumption of Calvinism, or try to vindicate the 
character of a holy and merciful God — triumph- 
antl}^ recognized as such in all our manifold trials 
and experiences, against the ungracious doctrine 
of a bigoted and savage creed ? The imputation 
of Adam's sin to the human race, has forever 
ceased to be a possible element in human faith : 
the Adamic dynasty has terminated its reign, for 
it is now known with indubitable certainty, that 
the era of man's existence upon the globe, dates 
back myriad ages anterior of the Eden-family : 
as I have demonstrated at greater length in my 
Work, entitled — " Teachings of Providence, or 



GOD'S CHARACTER VINDICATED. 41 

New Lessons on Old Subjects," and that the first 
man was not an intelligent image of Elohim, 
luxuriating in Paradise, but a groveling savage 
— the true Adam and progenitor of our race, 
whose cradle was rocked in the rude stone-age of 
the world's history. Hence, there being no 
Adam, there can be no posterity of Adam, and 
Adam having never existed, he cannot have 
sinned, whence it follows that no sin — considered 
as Adam's sin, can be imputed to mankind as his 
descendants. Such being the irrefragable facts 
in the case, the Calvinists — in their blind zeal 
and hard-heartedness, may see how they can re- 
concile with them the spirit and purport of their 
bloody and inhuman creed, that God has or- 
dained the majority of mankind to " dishonor 
and wrath," for their sins in Adam, "to the 
praise of his vindictive justice." Such, reader, is 
Calvinism ; and such orthodox creed-aberrance in its 
climax ! 



4* 



III. 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE AT THE 
SINS OF THEIR MEMBERS. 



The terms church, and congregation — it may 
be remarked here, I use as synonyms in this 
paper. Churches, or congregations, are organ- 
ized Christian societies whose paramount object 
is religious exercises and the growth in a virtu- 
ous and happy life. This object — it will be read- 
ily admitted, is alike grand and praiseworthy. 
For to improve in holy living, and set a worthy 
example to the world, is clearly man's highest 
destiny upon earth ; and hence the members of 
a congregation enjoy not only a distinguished 
honor in their religious connection, but they are, 
at the same time, under a solemn and inexorable 
obligation — the obligation to exercise without ceas- 
ing a wholesome Christian discipline over every 
individual of the organization, that thus their 
sincerity may be seen to be above suspicion, and 
their pretensions to superior sanctity at once 
recognized and triumphantly vindicated. 

A congregation being the admitted emblem or 
type of the Christian Church, its constitution 
42 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 43 

necessarily rests upon a basis similar in materials 
to that of its more comprehensive prototype. In 
their distinguished character of professors of the 
Gospel, Christians are properly presumed to be 
examples in their devotion to truth and right- 
eousness to the rest of mankind. If, therefore, 
the members of a congregation are not better in 
their morals or more conscientious in their inter- 
course with their fellow-beings than other people, 
in what, I pray, do they differ from the uncon- 
verted and vicious part of the community ? Pro- 
fessing to be " the salt of the earth," and " the 
light of the world," their lives must justify their 
exalted claims, or plain, common-sense people 
will unhesitatingly despise them for their pre- 
sumption, and laugh at their presumptuous folly. 
In short, a saintly creed, followed by sinful prac- 
tices, is evidence of inconsistence or inefl3.ciency, 
and positively precludes all respect for church- 
ethics. Indeed, without a speedy due correspon- 
dence between sentiment and action, precept and 
observance, the entire ghostly edifice must ere 
long fall to the ground ! 

There was a time when churches, or congrega- 
tions, were extensively believed to be the chosen 
channels of divine grace, on the one hand, and 
of redemption from sin on the other. For it was 
then that the lives of their members were care- 
fully watched over, and sin was promptly re- 
buked; that creeds were deemed of less impor- 



44 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

tance than godliness, and upright dealings in our 
intercourse with the world of greater weight 
than the most orthodox profession or ceremony. 
In those purer and better days of church-life : 
purer and better because they were more sincere 
and honest, it was easy to convert sinners, and, 
consequently to enlarge the borders of the 
Church ; for mankind saw that Christians were 
in earnest, and that they believed what they 
taught, while they only taught what they meant 
should be obeyed. Alas, it is otherwise now. 
Congregations are no longer the venerated sanc- 
tuaries which they once were, where people — in 
simple faith and unsuspecting trust : to be sure, 
not always realized, went to get rid of their sins, 
and to seek admission into heaven, by a life of 
meditation and holiness.' What has caused the 
sad change, and made Christianity thus unlovely ? 
Let the sequel demonstrate. 

Churches — or their synonyms, congregations, 
have in a great measure ceased to exercise disci- 
plinary functions, in conjunction with their other 
arduous, but more ordinary duties, and the sad 
result consequently is that virtue and noble aspi- 
rations have lamentably fallen into decay and dis- 
favor among their members. Reproof is now, 
I regret to say, seldom administered to the 
thoughtless trifler or the deliberate offender ; a 
formal trial of a member for misdeeds or neglect 
of duty, is extremely rare in these dissolute and 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 45 

reckless times ; and as to suspension or expulsion 
for gross violations of any of the precepts of the 
decalogue, by the congregation, it may be con- 
sidered to be altogether obsolete, except in ob- 
scure, still unsophisticated, and earnest commu- 
nities. Under these connivent and criminally 
indulgent circumstances, strongly and inevitably 
inculpating the vigilance and sincerity of be- 
lievers, the evil propensities with the attendant 
obliquities of conduct that may manifest them- 
selves among them, in most cases, receive no 
check, and the halting or desponding no encour- 
agement, and hence we need not wonder that 
there is scarcely a sin or a vice on the ethic cal- 
endar or the statutes of the commonwealth, that 
church-members will not practice or foster with- 
out — in most instances, incurring the censure or 
the penalty of the church. 

Thus it is notorious that many of them cheat, 
lie, get drunk, use profane language ; that they 
swindle, embezzle, and often freely, as well as 
unscrupulously, yield themselves up to various 
and pernicious licentious indulgences ; that they 
are connubially unfaithful and remiss in the dis- 
charge of their domestic or filial duties; that 
they figure, finally, even under the thrice-hate- 
ful characters of hypocrites and backbiters, and, 
hence, are in their ecclesiastical, or religious ca- 
pacity, " unfaithful servants," nay, an unmiti- 
2;ated disgrace; in their social relations a nui- 



46 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

sance and a plague, no less than a most grievous 
affliction to the worthy and confiding citizen ! 
This gloomy picture — disheartening and repellent 
as it, unquestionably, is, will not be considered 
overdrawn or exaggerated, except, perhaps, by 
the churches whose delinquencies it portrays, and 
whose guilt, unhappily, admits no doubt. Evi- 
dently, as far as the lives of men are concerned, 
there seems to be little difference between the 
saint and the sinner, and as long as discrimina- 
tion between the sheep and the goats is so difficult, 
or the one is so nearly like the other in seeming 
and action, it is clear that a new start — under 
fairer auspices and a better hope, must be taken 
in religious culture and bearing, if the Church, 
recognized, in its widest sense, as Christendom, 
would once more enjoy the prestige of former 
daj^s and a more normal activity. There is abso- 
lutely no alternative; believers — as individuals 
or congregations, must be morally less vulner- 
able; less open to censure; less base and treach- 
erous, than "the children of this world." Unless, 
I feel persuaded, a reformation, so eminently 
needed, shall be speedily inaugurated, and thor- 
oughly carried out, creeds will no longer require 
watching over; ministers will no longer be in 
demand : temples and houses of worship will 
soon be desolate ; and Christians — once a mighty 
power in the earth, a sad relic of the past; a 
theme worthy only of the researches of the anti- 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 47 

quarian ! May help come speedily, and, once 
more, " the dry hones live /"* 

A main cause of such remarkable laxity of 
morals, and such consequent vitiation of mutual 
confidence and good will, is clearly traceable to 
the false and anti-scriptural doctrine of good 
works, promulgated in the Protestant Church, 
which thus peremptorily discards them as utterly 
worthless in the scheme of Christian redemption. 
Faith alone^ the Augsburg Confession, for exam- 
ple, teaches, is a means of " forgiveness of sins, 
and justification through Christ, and earns for us 
grace and favor in the sight of God !" One of 
the salient proof-texts, of Protestants, in favor 
of faith and in opposition to good works, as 
instrumentalities in salvation, is contained in the 
Epistle of St. Paul to the Eomans, iii. 28 : " There- 
fore, we conclude, that a man is justified by faith 
without the deeds of the law."t The expression 
" deeds of the law," in this place, does not de- 
note moral deeds, or good works properly so 

* Ezekiel, xxxvii. 3-4. 

f The text in Luke, xvii. 10, is also a chief authority for the 
rejection of good works from the favored list of redeeming 
instrumentalities, but it behooves to know, that the phrase 
unprofitableness mentioned there, is owing to a false exe- 
gesis, and that the sense of the original simply is, that in 
doing what we are commanded to do, we have no cause to 
boast, or claim the merit of supererogatory services, inasmuch, 
of course, as God \s primarily "the giver of every good and 
perfect gift." 



48 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

called, but simply Levitical, or ritualistic deeds ; as, 
sacrifices, wave-offerings, circumcision, burning 
incense, sprinkling blood, observance of holj- 
dajs, new-moons, sabbatlis, fasts and festivals, the 
superstitious discrimination of meats, the cut and 
texture of the sacerdotal robes, etc. Commenta- 
tors, before they presume to undermine and destroy 
the God-given moral law, should try and acquire 
a little more accurate knowledge of the Bible, or 
else refrain from teaching it. I shall now demon- 
strate to the candid and intelligent reader, that Hev- 
efe^zoTi in controvertibly teaches the paramount im- 
portance of good works in the Christian Church.* 
Christ, in Matthew, vii. 21, refuses to concede 
heaven to persons, who are content with a repe- 
tition of pious exclamations in their Divine ser- 
vice, but readily enough grants it to the doers of 
the will of the Father in heaven. Later in the 
same context, he likens the doer of his " sayings," 
to a wise man, who builds his house upon a 
rock^' : not upon a mere assent to a proposition. 
In the twenty-second chapter of the same book, 
having been asked by a lawyer, which he con- 

* With an air of non-committal, however, the Augsburg 
Confession somewhat softens its glaring and criminal an- 
tipathy to good works and says : " It is necessary to do all 
manner of good works, as God has commanded, for God's sake," 
but this evasion is simply an egregious blunder ; for God does 
not need our services, but the good works, which he com- 
mands us to do, we are to do for our own sakes ! 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 49 

sidered " the greatest commandment in the law," 
he promptly replied " love to God and love to 
man," are the greatest of all commandments, and 
that they are the very essence and foundation of 
the bihlical requirements, in which, therefore, all 
laws and prophecies finally center ! But what is 
the meaning of this excellent virtue, legible in a 
supreme love to God and man ? The following 
plain, pithy teachings will inform us : in the 
Gospel, as we find it handed down to us in St. 
John, xiv. 15, 21; xv. 10, Christ tells us, that they 
that " love him, keep his commandments" ; and 
hence I think, we may justly infer, that good 
works are of more intrinsic worth than faith, 
and decidedly constitute the chief, available fac- 
tors in the Christian's life. Again, in the impres- 
sive parable of the ^'pounds," recorded in the 
nineteenth chapter of Luke, Christ indubitably 
sets forth the memorable fact, that in the admin- 
istration of his government, God rewards or 
punishes mankind according as they work or 
are idle ; or, in other words, according as they 
are faithful or perfidious, in the use of the gifts 
with which they have been intrusted. The 
same significant and eminently reasonable tenet 
is brought out in bold relief, in the twentieth 
chapter of Matthew, where "the laborers in the 
vineyard," get paid for labor done, not for any 
theoretic virtue. They were expressly hired and 
remunerated — let this incident be carefully borne 



50 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

in mind, as laborers^ or workers, bearing the " lieat 
and burden of the day/' not on account of their 
hoary catechisms or their savory orthodoxy. If 
now, we advert to the decalogue in the Book of 
Exodus, for light on this weighty and attractive 
theme, common sense will tell us, that God 
would not have given commandments to the 
Jewish people, unless he had intended that they 
should be observed. He never — it is to be borne 
in mind, presented them with tablets of beliefs, 
but he did present them with tablets of com- 
mandments ; over which — we are assured, by the 
sacred writer, he watches with intense solicitude, 
punishing and rewarding with strict justice and 
inevitable certainty ! 

It is deemed proper in this stage of our inquiry, 
to cite some additional evidence in vindication of 
good works, against the unethical and lawless 
creed of a spurious theology. Agreeably to what 
the prophet Ezekiel writes, in the eighteenth 
chapter of his ample and interesting prophecies, 
the man that "hath done that which is lawful 
and right, and kept all the statutes, he shall live.'' 
Let him believe what he will, his moral integrity 
alone will save him at the bar of God ! — St. Paul 
also may be consulted with marked advantage to 
the momentous cause, which this Paper is espe- 
cially designed to defend. Thus in the second 
chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, he — no less 
concisely than emphatically, makes the pointed 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 51 

statement, that " not the hearers of the law, but 
the doers of the law, and are just and justified 
before God." This plain, Pauline teaching, 
does not look much — I think, as if '^ we received 
forgiveness of sins and justification through faith, 
in Christ," unless the disciple of Gamaliel knew 
less about the matter than the antinomian Re- 
formers of the sixteenth century. — The apostle 
James too, in the second chapter of his instruc- 
tive and strangely synergistic Epistle,* finally may 
be supposed to give the ultimatum on the absorb- 
ing question at issue, when he announces the 
decisive fact, that " faith without works is dead, 
even as the body without the spirit is dead." 
Judging from the purport of this sensible and 
pertinent teaching, faith is utterly w^orthless as 
an element in Gospel-life, without good works : 
the very heart and stafi" of genuine Christianity ! 

The series of proofs in favor of the superiority 
of good w^orks over faith, in the evangelical pro- 
fession, might easily be augmented to the extent 
even of the entire Bible, bearing upon this fertile 
discussion ; for from the Alpha to the Omega of 
that ponderous and otherwise greatly diversified 
volume, good works : moral works, are made the 
indispensable condition of the life of a child of 
God ! Indeed, everywhere in the wide universe, 

* Synergism teaches the necessity of good works, as acts of 
free-agency, to make grace effectual. 



52 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

as far as our knowledge extends, creation is ever 
busy, ever working. Stars and planets never cease 
their labor, or weary in their orbits. Everything 
either in inorganic matter or animated nature, 
subsists only and has its being by working. Life 
and death alike are but diverse forms or aspects of 
work. Light and heat too are only so many forces 
doing work — in clouds and storms and floods ; in 
sunshine and darkness. Kay, heaven and earth 
would cease to be, unless they should do work ; 
for work everywhere ; work always, is the soul 
of the kosmos — the world ! Finally, God too, I 
doubt not, works, and in work, has life and might 
and being!* 

In summing up the substance of the preceding 
arguments, it must be patent to every unpreju- 
diced mitid, that it is, indeed, largely owing to 
the shameful neglect of the churches, or congre- 
gations, to exercise a wholesome and seasonable 
discipline over their members, that vice and 
treachery have acquired so alarming an ascend- 
ency in the community, and which can, therefore, 
be stayed only by the judicious application of 
appropriate punitive remedies to a lapsed and 
wicked membership. But what redress of griev- 
ances can be expected of religious organizations, 
whose heterodoxy in respect to good works, has 
checked the growth in grace, and makes the 

* John XV. 17. 



CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 53 

people depraved. Besides, the whole Protestant 
world is told that good works are a hinderance 
rather than a furtherance to salvation, and, that, 
hence, if we do the best we can, it is unprofitable 
labor. False priests, inculcating derogation of 
good works, that they may extol the merits of 
faith, need we wonder that men should live as 
worldly self-interest or evil passion dictates? 
The result is clearly most disastrous to the 
interests of Christianity, for many, who observe 
the outward forms and requirements of religion, 
do it — in numerous instances, only for a pretence 
or expediency. It is evident, therefore, that if 
churches will hereafter do their duty, they must 
pray less and work more ; have fewer articles of 
faith, and a higher standard of morality ; a less 
numerous church-ceremonial, and a broader and 
purer humanity, that is, do to others, as they wish 
others to do to them ! 

The influence of Christianity over the minds 
of men, is — it is vain to deny it, rapidly waning, 
and many powerful factors in social progress and 
religious development, are constantly more and 
more encroaching on the once ameliorating and 
benign mission of the Church. Carlyle, in his 
remarkable book, entitled — " Heroes, Hero-Wor- 
ship, and the Heroic in History," thus illus- 
trates this striking fact more in detail, and, 
hence, sets it forth in its true bearing : "I many 
a time say," . he thus proceeds, " the writers of 

5* 



54 CHURCHES MUST NOT CONNIVE, ETC. 

ISTewspapers, Pamphlets, Poems, Books, these are 
the real working, effective Church of a modern 
country, i^ay, not only our preaching, but even 
our worship, is not it too accomplished by means 
of Printed Books ? The noble sentiment which 
a gifted soul has clothed for us in melodious 
words, which brings melody into our hearts — is 
not this essentially, if we will understand it, of 
the nature of worship ? There are many, in all 
countries, who, in this confused time, have no 
other method of worship. He who, in any way, 
shows us better than we knew before that a lily 
of the fields is beautiful, does he not show it us 
as an effluence of the Fountain of all Beauty; 
as the hand-writing, made visible there, of the 
great Maker of the Universe ? He has sung for 
us, made us sing with him, a little verse of a 
sacred Psalm. Essentially so. How much more 
he who sings, who says, or in any way brings 
home to our hearts the noble doings, feelings, 
darings and endurances of a brother man ! He 
has verily touched our hearts as with a live coal 
from the altar. Perhaps there is no worship more 
authentic. Literature, so far as it is Literature, 
is an '• apocalypse of IS^ature,' a revealing of the 
' open secret.' It may w^ell enough be named, in 
Fichte's style, a ' continuous revelation' of the 
Godlike in the Terrestrial and Common," etc. 



IV- 

INSPIRATION. 



IJt^TRODUCTIOK 

Inspiration- — according to Webster, our dis- 
tinguished lexicographer, " Is the supernatural 
influence of the Spirit of God on the human 
mind," etc. Under this influence, writes Doctor 
Alexander in his " Dictionary of the Bible," 
" the sacred writers were rendered infallible in 
what they wrote or spoke." From these defini- 
tions, it is clear that inspiration — in the biblical 
sense of the term, is a miracle^ for it is supernat- 
ural both in its origin and in its effects, being, 
first, a Divine afflatus, and, second, a means to 
make man infallible : in fact a double and most 
elaborate miracle. The inspiration thus con- 
cisely pointed out, differs from ordinary inspi- 
rations, vouchsafed, as Cicero teaches, to all 
great and good men, in being exclusively con- 
fined to the communication of Divine revela- 

55 



56 INSPIRATION. 

tions, or the Scripture, as is taught by St. Paul, 
2 Timothy, iii. 16, when he writes : " All Scrip- 
ture is given by the inspiration of God." 

The advocates of a miraculous inspiration, lay 
much stress upon this unqualified Pauline asser- 
tion, just quoted, but, I am sorry to say, it does 
not serve their purpose well, inasmuch as the 
Scriptures, here referred to, denote only the Old- 
Testament Scriptures, no other being then ex- 
tant ! Whence it follows that we have no posi- 
tive warrant for the common belief, that the ]^ew- 
Testament too is the product of a Divine afilatus. 
But let us suppose it to have been thus originated, 
should not its teachings be readily intelligible to 
those for whom it is especially and primarily de- 
signed ? Instead, however, of this being the case, 
as is reasonable to expect, St. Peter, in his Second 
Epistle, assured us, that in Paul's epistles are 
some things hard to he understood, which " they 
that are unlearned and unstable, wrest — as they 
also do the other Scriptures, unto their own de- 
struction." What need is there, it may be asked, 
of a miraculous revelation to mankind, when the 
bulk of them — the unlearned, cannot understand 
it, and, hence, wrest it to their destruction ? Is 
not such an inspiration a blight rather than a 
blessing? If Peter is correct in his estimation 
of the writings of his fellow-Apostle, they ought 
summarily and without delay, be ejected from 
the sacred canon ! Moreover, if the writers of the 



INSPIRATION. 57 

ISTew-Testament were miraculously inspired, in 
the conduct of their weighty apocalyptic mission, 
how came it that Paul and Peter, according to 
Galatians, ii. 11-14, had a sharp dispute, and that 
the former charged the latter with dissimulation^ 
and a hase regard to self-interest, or seeking of 
the popular favor? They could easily, it seems, 
have done all this without the gift of a supernat- 
ural inspiration ! 

Let us now, before we proceed further, reason 
a little upon the subject of inspiration. Does it 
not premise a suspension of the ordinary func- 
tions of the human mind ? a conversion of man 
into a machine ? Why then could he not be dis- 
pensed w^ith altogether, and the Divine afflatus be 
the sole and sufficient vehicle of communication : 
inspiration and amanuensis in unity ? Moreover, is 
not God all-wise and all-powerful ? and why then 
should he not have foreseen future contingencies, 
making an extraordinary revelation to mankind 
necessary, and, accordingly, provided for them ah 
initio ? Or is his mundane labor in so rude and 
unfinished a state, that he must now fill up a gap 
here, or make an addition there ? Such a god is 
the barbarian's god — a bungling architect, using 
neither square nor plummet, but he is not the 
God of the intelligent man, w^hose creations bear 
the impress, at once, of regularity and immuta- 
ble law ! 

What is to bo considered as very singular in 



58 INSPIRATION. 

the presumptive miraculous displays of Divine 
power, is emphatically the fact, that according 
both to myth and tradition, they have always 
taken place in comparatively dark and supersti- 
tious ages of the world, and among barbarous 
and credulous people : among people, who ex- 
pected miracles; whose divinities constantly in- 
terfered in human aiFairs, or the government of 
the world ; who knew nothing of order and fixed 
laws in the universe around them ; and Avho 
w^ould have thought themselves forsaken and of 
small account in the Divine economy, if the gods 
or the Deity had not ceaselessly put forth special 
agencies in their behalf : Providence then was an 
uncertain, variable, and arbitrary ministry, while 
now we deem it a pre-ordained institution, or the 
sequence in an endless and inexorable concatena- 
tion of cause and effect ! From these premises, 
it follows — of course, that the more ignorant and 
sensuous people have been, the more extensive 
and indomitable has been the belief in miracles, 
revelations, incarnations, and theocracies ! How 
glad, how profoundly thankful — at the present 
day, mankind would be, if they could have a 
little more light ; a little more certainty, for exam- 
ple, of their final destiny ; but the}^ are with-held 
from them, and they are left to grope in the dark, 
and to seek relief in vain ! A sure proof, I 
think, that the dogma of Scripture-inspiration, 
is a Jewish chimera, based on the astonishing 



INSPIRATION. 59 

conceit of a people, audaciously believing itself 
to be the darling favorite of Heaven ! 

" E"o miracle,* such as those of which early 
histories are full," writes Kenan, "has taken 
place under conditions which science can accept. 
Experience shows, without exception, that mira- 
cles occur only in times and in countries in which 
miracles are believed in, and in the presence of 
persons who are disposed to believe in them. I^o 
miracle has ever been performed before an assem- 
blage of spectators capable of testing its reality. 
]^either uneducated people, nor even men of the 
world, have the requisite capacity; great precau- 
tions are needed, and a long habit of scientific re- 
search. Have we not seen the men of the world 
in our own time, become the dupes of the most 
childish and absurd illusions ? and if it is certain 
that no contemporary miracles will bear investi- 
gation, is it not possible that the miracles of the 
past, were we able to examine into them in detail, 
would be found equally to contain an element of 
error ? It is not in the name of this or that phil- 
osophy, it is in the name of an experience which 
never varies, that we banish miracles from his- 
tory. We do not say a miracle is impossible, 



* Miracles — beside what are implied in the dogma of inspi- 
ration, are usually — I think, I may add, always^ performed, in 
authentication of the inspired teachers' mission. A reference 
to the Bible, will verify the statement. — G. 



60 INSPIRATION. 

we say only that no miracle has ever yet been 
proved."* 

Speaking more particularly of the miracle — 
inspiration^ and of the doubt and perplexities in 
which the subject is involved, Froude calmly but 
with deep emphasis, expresses himself deliberately 
in this wise, in the learned Work, quoted in the last 
paragraph : " It seems certain that in some way or 
other, this belief in inspiration requires to be re- 
vised. We are compelled to examine more pre- 
cisely what we mean by the word. The account of 
the creation of man and the world, which is given 
in Genesis and which is made by St. Paul the basis 
of his theology, has not yet been reconciled with 
facts, which science knows to be true. Death 
was in the world before Adam's sin, and unless 
Adam's age is thrust back to a distance which no 
ingenuity can torture the letter of Scripture into 
recognizing, men and women lived and died upon 
the earth whole millenniums before the Eve of Sa- 
cred History listened to the temptation of the 
snake. !N"either has any such deluge as that from 
which, according to the received interpretation, 
the ark saved I^oah, swept over the globe Avithin 
the human period. We are told that it was not 
God's purpose to anticipate the natural course of 
discovery : as the story of the creation was writ- 
ten in human language, so the details of it may 

^ Froude — " Short Studies on Great Subjects." 



INSPIRATION. ei 

have been adapted to tlie existing state of human 
knowledge. — ^But if it is so, there are many 
things in the Bible, which must become as un- 
certain as its geology or its astronomy. There 
is the long secular history of the Jewish people. 
Let it be once established that there is room for 
error anywhere, and we have no security for the 
accuracy of this history. The inspiration of the 
Bible is the foundation of our whole belief; and 
it is a grave matter if we are uncertain to what 
extent it reaches, or how much and what it guar- 
antees to us as true. We cannot live on probabili- 
ties,'' etc. 

According to the " Fathers of the Christian 
Church," the Holy Spirit, in the feat of inspira- 
tion, is alone the real author of the Scriptures — 
the cause efficient, while the sacred writers are 
employed only as passive instruments in the ex- 
ecution of his purpose. This ultra view of the 
subject, is likewise more or less clearly set forth 
in the symbolical books of the Protestant Church. 
Everj^where, in fact, on biblical ground, inspira- 
tion confronts us as a miraculous and infallible 
factor in Revelation. Whether its claim is well 
founded, the sequel will show. 



62 INSPIRATION. 

CHAPTER I. 

Mis-Quotations. 

The quotations from the Old -Testament, which 
we find in the Gospel, are mostly taken from the 
Septuagint : the Greek copy of the original He- 
brew text. What is peculiarly singular in this 
case, is the striking circumstance, that the wri- 
ters of the Kew-Testament — presumed, of course, 
to have been inspired, should have preferred to 
quote from the Septuagint : a version, or copy 
only of the Hebrew Bible, and which could make 
no pretensions to the exemptions from error, 
claimed for the original, ostensibly inspired co- 
dex ; and that, besides, the standard English 
translation, executed in the reign of King James 
the First, of England, should be made from the 
inspired Word, by uninspired men ! What is 
also noteworthy is, that the quotations are often 
not only, more or less, but, sometimes, markedly, 
at variance with the Greek source from which 
they are avowedly derived, while, again, on the 
other hand, they no less differ from the received 
English edition. If the Hebrew text is inspired, 
why were the quotations in the ITew-Testament 
made from the uninspired Septuagint ? It seems 
exceedingly strange, that inspired, infallible men 
should prefer the common to the sacred, the 
doubtful to the certain ! What use was there 



INSPIRATION. g3 

of a plenary inspiration, of tlie writers of the 
Old-Testament, if later inspired writers mostly 
ignored them in the building up and authentica- 
tion of a new revelation ? Here is an instance 
of a crass inconsistency, and a clear proof that 
in the apostolic age, the doctrine of the inspira- 
tion was ill-understood, or held in exceedingly 
light esteem ! Let the learned reader consult the 
following passages — as exemplifications, among 
many others, of the discrepancies here alluded 
to : St. Matthew, ii. 6, and Micah, v. 2 ; St. Mat- 
thew, iii. 3, and Isaiah, xl. 3 ; St. Matthew, xii. 21, 
and Isaiah, xlii. 4 ; St. Matthew, xv. 8, and Isaiah, 
xxix. 13. Such, and scores of similar variations, 
may readily be met in the I^ew-Testament be- 
tween the quotations and the originals, and 
though theologians are not wanting who main- 
tain, that they do not seriously affect the doc- 
trine of inspiration, a writer in Chambers's En- 
cyclopaedia, makes the very cogent and sensible 
remark, that " They are recognized as real dis- 
crepancies — human imperfections in the sacred 
record, and, as consequent^ proving, that the 
mere text or letter of Scripture, is not infallible ; 
that, in short, it cannot be regarded as a direct 
utterance of the Most High."* 



* This writer, referring to St. Paul's allegorical argument 
about the sons of the Jewish patriarch, Abraham, Galatians, 
iv. 22, 25, says with strict logical propriety : " There is noth- 



64 INSPIRATION. 

CHAPTER 11. 

Contradictions of the New-Testament Writers. 

I FIND the heading of this chapter so ably il- 
lustrated and accurately verified, by the English 
author, noticed in the preceding article, that I 
shall take the liberty in this place to avail myself 
verbatim of his labor : " All," says he, " who have 
studied the Gospel minutely, and especially the 
quotations in the Gospels and the Epistles of St. 
Paul from the Old-Testament, know that there 
are various inaccuracies and misapplications of 
facts throughout them. — The following are only 
a few of the instances in which such ^ imper- 
fections and contradictions' show themselves : 

" 1. The recital of the temptation in St. Matthew 
and St. Luke. In the former, Matthew, iv. 6-8, 
the vision from the pinnacle of the temple is 
placed first; in the latter, Luke, iv. 1-10, that 
from a lofty mountain takes precedence. 

"2. In Matthew, x. 10, Jesus commands his 
apostles to take for their missionary journey 
neither ' scrip, neither two coats, neither shoes, 
nor yet staves.^ In Mark, vi. 8, he commands 
them to ' take nothing for their journey, save a 
stafiT only.' 

ing valid, no divine authoritative element, it may be said, 
that can survive such deductions. If there are such errors 
in Scripture, why may it not all be imperfect or erroneous?" 



INSPIRATION. 65 

" 3. In the narrative of the Passion, as in that 
of the Resurrection, there are numerous contra- 
dictions of detail, resting on a fundamental and 
striking unity. According to Mark, xiv. 72, the 
cock is represented as crowing on each of the 
first and second occasions on which Peter denies 
his Lord. In the accounts given hy the other 
evangelists, the cock only crows upon the third 
denial, Matthew, xxvi. 74; Luke, xxii. 60. The 
statement of the death of Judas diifers mate- 
rially in Matthew and in the Acts of the Apos- 
tles. According to the former, Judas casts down 
the pieces of silver, and departs and hangs him- 
self; and the chief priests afterwards purchase 
with the price of his guilt the potter's field for 
the hurial of strangers, hence called the field of 
blood. According to the Acts of the Apostles, 
i. 18, Judas himself is represented as having 
purchased the field ' with the reward of in- 
iquity;' then as having in some way — not ex- 
plicitly stated in the narrative, met there a bloody 
death, from which circumstance the field took its 
name. In the narrative of the Resurrection, it is 
well known there are numerous variations ; and 
numerous palpable errors of memory as to his- 
torical facts, occur, such as may be seen by com- 
paring Mark, ii. 26, with 1 Samuel, xxi. 2-6, and 
1 Corinthians, x. 8, with Numbers, xxv. 9." 

The following brief notices of variations of 
statement, embracing instances in history, doc- 



66 INSPIRATION. 

trine, and biography, may serve to furnish a 
little additional matter, relevant to this sad sub- 
ject: First, in the Genealogy of Jesus, it is 
stated in Matthew, that Joseph, the husband of 
Mary, was the son of Jacob, in Luke, that he 
was the son of Heli; second, when Jesus began 
his ministry, he was regarded — we are told in 
Luke, as being the son of Joseph : a view, 
which the Jews of his time generally enter- 
tained, as is evident from Matthew, xiii. 53-56 ; 
but in turning to Matthew, i. 18, 20, and Luke, 
i. 35, we learn that Jesus is not a mere man at 
allj but a demi-god, that is, an incarnated god : a 
god-nian ; third, in the table of ancestral de- 
scent, the genealogist reckons fourteen genera- 
tions from David to the Babylonian captivity, 
whereas, in fact, there are fifteen ; fourth, 
Mary's conception of the future Savior, pre- 
cedes the angelic announcement, according to 
Matthew, but follows it according to Luke : in 
the former case, it is history, in the latter, 
prophecy i 

Kow, where is the proof here, of the predomi- 
nance of a supernatural inspiration and an infal- 
lible authorship in the sacred pages of the Gos- 
pel ? Perhaps the variations owe their existence 
to inierpolatiQns ! It may be the case, but then 
that would not solve, but only enhance the 
difficulty of the problem ; for it would be still 
impossible to comprehend why so great a gift 



INSPIRATION. 67 

as such an inspiration must — a priori, be deemed 
to be, should be so little cared for, or so indiffer- 
ently watched over, by Providence, as quietly to 
suffer its vitiation and consequent failure ! 



CHAPTER III. 



Commentators and Sects, or the Ostensible Ambiguity of the 

Scriptures. 

If a wise and good human father should tell 
his children what they must do to be saved, 
might we not reasonably suppose that — in so 
momentous a matter, he would use such lan- 
guage as they could understand without diffi- 
culty and without the risk of diversity of mean- 
ing, or misapprehension ? Have we not at least 
equally good reason to expect that the heavenly 
Father — in his assumed communications to his 
children, on the same all-important subject, 
should be, at least, not less circumspect and adap- 
tive than many in the discharge of his tutorial 
functions among his children — the human family ? 
Human language is imperfect, and liable often 
to be misunderstood, for it is not a supernatural 
product, as is claimed that the Bible is, nor are 
men ordinarily infallible as the sacred writers are 
presumed to have been. Such being the case, 
we have a right to require that the language of 
the Bible, bearing the message of salvation to 



QS INSPIRATION. 

US, should be plain, facile of insight, and im- 
possible to be mistaken. Is not God almighty, 
and having given us a Revelation, may we not 
presume that he should have so endowed it as to 
be competent to be carried out with entire una- 
nimity of sentiment? If, on the contrary, it 
fails in this happy result, it is clear that it is not 
a supernaturally Divine gift, and the proud dogma 
of a plenary inspiration falls to the ground. 

Commentators and sects demand a concise 
notice here, inasmuch as they are the living 
proofs of the ambiguity of a large part of Sacred 
Writ. First, commentators. — A name, implying 
legion in numbers, but in its import here, inter- 
preters of Scripture. ^N^ot the best four-horse 
team in Christendom, could draw all the com- 
mentaries, which have been written in elucida- 
tion of the Bible, and mostly with the sinister 
and abortive result, that the last volume left it 
very little more cleared up than the first had 
found it! Such being the fact, either man is 
incompetent to understand the message, made 
to him in plain, simple language, by his Maker, 
or else that language does not embody — as is 
afiirmed and largely believed, a miraculous com- 
munication from God. What, God speaks to me 
miraculously, and in a matter of life and death, 
and I cannot understand him, but must send for 
a commentator to come and tell me what God 
means, thus running the risk of dying before 



INSPIRATION. 69 

his arrival, and being lost ? Such contingency 
is inadmissible : when God really speaks to me, 
I must necessarily understand him, and my sal- 
vation is sure, if I am but faithful in the observ- 
ance of my duty. I do not intend to say, however, 
that we do not often — in the ordinary instructions 
of ProA^dence, misunderstand, or but partially 
understand, the teachings of God, but when this 
is the case, the matter is not so urgent, and a 
further study as well as a larger practice of the 
Divine law, will generally give us the needful 
information. Hence, when my salvation is im- 
plicated, I must — to be true to orthodox beliefs 
on the subject of Kevelation, treat directly with 
my God : he, not a commentator, or other Shib- 
boleth authority, speaks, and I hear ! Ambiguity 
of the Scriptures, therefore, implies — so far as it 
exists, that it is of human, not Divine origin ! 

Second, sects. — They are emphatically the ac- 
knowledged disintegrators of Church-union, and 
the organized fact — living and laboring in un- 
conscious protest against the dogma of a super- 
naturally communicated and inviolate Word of 
God. Each of the numerous sects, with which 
Christendom is illustrated or afflicted, is arrayed 
in but ill-concealed, hostile attitude, against the 
other; each has its distinct creed, or Shibboleth; 
each has its contracted, sectarian rules of exege- 
sis; its liturgy, ceremonial, and church-polity; 
its seminaries and professorships ; its missiona- 



70 INSPIRA TION. 

ries and mission-fields ; its select way to heaven ; 
its petty popes, morose bigots, base hypocrites, 
and its narrow, conceited sect-pride ?* 

What do we find here ? Not a building, di- 
vided into many diverse departments, resting on 
a solely God-laid foundation, but a structure, 
reared upon a basis partly divine and partly 
human : more human than divine, and, hence, 
with the elements of truth, much truth, perhaps, 
here and there, yet more error and illusion than 
truth in it ; but not a structure with supernatural 
material, and supernatural sj^mmetry and perfec- 
tion ; nay, with no perfection at all ; only a tenta- 
tive sacred life-manifestation, and, therefore, a 
plastic, or architectonic phenomenon in the natu- 
ral way^ which too is God's way, but a way most 
decidedly of means, labor, thought, prayer, man's 
free-agency and divine grace ; not a way of 
miracles, but virtually a repudiation of all pre- 
ternatural interference in man's destiny ! 



CHAPTER IV. 



Plenary Inspiration is not needed among the 
lay members of the Roman Catholic Church, as 
the priests only — with rare exceptions, are al- 

* Proverbially expressed, it may be said with much truth, 
as many sects^ as many bibles ! 



INSPIRATION. 71 

lowed the use of the Bible. Under circumstances 
so adverse to our ideas of a divine communica- 
tion to mankind, and which must have been fore- 
seen by God, a revelation, made on the basis of 
miraculous intervention, would have been super- 
fluous; a mere waste of energy, and, therefore, 
the church of Rome cannot have any just pre- 
tensions to the possession of a strictly and liter- 
ally God-given Bible !* 

In Hogan's Synopsis of Popery, "As it Was 
o and As it Is," we find the following pretty Jesuit- 
ical teaching. Among the instructions which I 
received from my bishop in Ireland, when he sent 
me out to this country as a Catholic priest, was 
one to which I beg to call your attention — the 
same is given to every priest in the United States : 
" Let it be your first duty to extirpate heretics, 
but be cautious as to the manner of doing it. Do 
nothing without consulting the bishop of the di- 
ocese in which you may be located ; and if there 
is no bishop there, advise with the metropolitan 
bishop. He has his instructions from Rome, and 
he understands the character of the people. Be 
sure not to permit the members of our holy 

* The Greek Church seems to be very debased, and has very- 
little the appearance — to judge from the following statement, 
that it is under rigid theocratic government ; for we are told 
by Buck — "Theological Dictionary," "That its religion is 
now greatly corrupted, and, indeed, little better than a heap 
of ridiculous ceremonies and absurdities." 



72 INSPIRATION. 

church, who may be under your charge, to read 
the Bible. It is the source of all heresies," etc. 

To the foregoing startling testimony on this 
portentous subject, the reference which I shall 
make in this place, will tend still further to set 
forth the alarming significance of its malignant 
and dangerous tendency. I quote, in this in- 
stance, from Dr. Berg's translation of a syyiopsis 
of Dens' " Moral Theology, as Prepared for the 
Use of Romish Seminaries and Students of The- 
ology." 

To the suppositive question, " Is the reading 
of the Sacred Scriptures necessary or commanded 
to all ?" Dens replies, " That it is not necessary 
or commanded to all, is plain from the practice 
and doctrine of the universal church ; for which 
reason, in the Bull Unigenitus, the seventieth 
proposition concerning this thing was con- 
demned : ^ It is useful and necessary at every 
time and place, and for every kind of people to 
study and learn the spirit, piety, and mysteries of 
the Sacred Scriptures.' It is further proved, 
thus : * It is the duty of some in the church to 
teach ; it is the duty of others to seek knowledge 
of the law from the mouth of the priests, almost 
in the same way as, in civil aifairs, it is not the 
duty of all to investigate the laws, judge contro- 
versies,' " etc. 

Again, the same Roman author writes in this 
wise : " As it is manifest by experience, if the 



INSPIRA TION. 73 

Holy Bible in the vulgar tongue is everywhere 
indiscriminately permitted, more injury than 
advantage would accrue, on account of the 
temerity of the people, let it abide in this 
point by the judgment -of the bishop or inquis- 
itor : that with the advice of the priest or confes- 
sor, the reading of the Bible, in the vulgar tongue, 
translated by Catholic authors, may be conceded 
to those, who — they know, can derive no injury, 
but an increase of faith and piety from such 
reading; which permission they must have in 
writing. But whoever shall presume without 
such permission to have, or to read it, cannot ob- 
tain absolution of his sins, unless the Bible is 
first returned to the ordinary. But regulars may 
neither purchase, nor read them, except by per- 
mission obtained from their prelates," etc. 

Here — under papal hierarchy, plenary inspira- 
tion and a miraculously given and guarded Word 
of God, seem out of the question ; nay, in fact, 
out of place ; for what use can a "Word of God 
be, that none of the people, except in rare cases, 
is allowed to read ? If the Bible is the Revelation 
of God to man, then all men, not alone the 
priests — robbers of souls, must use it as a mes- 
sage, addressed to each individually, and where 
this is not the case, but priests interdict its read- 
ing to the people, on pain of damnation, implied 
by the threatened refusal of absolution, in case of 
disobedience, there can be a Word of God only 

7 



74 INSPIRATION. 

through the deus in nobis, that is, through God's 
teaching of us in the revelations of nature : the 
Word of God being, hence, a product of human- 
ism, in its concrete reHgious culmination. Whence 
it is the ultimatum of a mature competent judg- 
ment, that however extensive the belief in mir- 
acles was in the hoary past, it was a vulgar belief, 
no longer suited to the present state of civiliza- 
tion, and that, finally, the Bible is only a mediate 
gift of God, written and spoken by man, and ad 
hominem, or according to man ! 



■V. 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL AS 
TAUGHT IN THE AUGSBUKG CONFESSION: 
AND ORTHODOX CREEDS GENERALLY. 



PREFACE. 



It is exceedingly strange, that for so many 
ages, the Christian religion has been promul- 
gated upon an entirely false basis ; and that, 
hence, instead of having promoted a legitimate 
and wholesome development of mankind in dis- 
seminating truth and righteousness upon the 
earth, human nature has been — with compara- 
tively few exceptions, unceasingly reviled, and 
God most shockingly blasphemed! The prem- 
ises from which this orthodox Christianity, not 
Christ- Christianity, has been deduced, which can 
result thus disastrously, are utterly devoid of 
truth, and founded upon an illusion, or a morbid 
fancy. This view of the subject may, perhaps, 
sound harshly in the delicate ears of the true be- 
liever, but it should be recollected that nothing 
is so sacred ; so precious, as truth, which, never- 
theless, has been deliberately and most shame- 



<•) 



76 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

fully violated in every age and country, since the 
domination of orthodoxy in the Church, by those 
who profess to be the God-ordained religious 
teachers of mankind. How can they have dared 
to do so atrociously wicked a thing ? " Because," 
it is replied, " they thought, no doubt, that they 
were doing God excellent, nay, meritorious ser- 
vice, notwithstanding their senseless vitupera- 
tions against merits/' Granting this to be true, 
they must be still deemed guilty of grievous sin, 
unless to be undeceived under existing circum- 
stances, was impossible : a contingence not likely 
to have occurred. 

The corruption of the Christian religion — in- 
tended primarily and simply by its founder, as a 
reformation of Jewish faith and morals, on com- 
mon-sense principles and with a view of the so- 
cial elevation of his people, having once fairly 
set in, rapidly gained ground as the Church 
widened its limits, and assiduously elaborated 
its eminently spurious creed, until, finally, very 
little truth or beauty was left in the boasted, 
orthodox system of salvation, while, on the other 
hand, man generally : owing to the false and de- 
grading theology in which he had been educated, 
or — rather, debased and vilified, had lost all con- 
fidence in his power of free-agency ; in his capa- 
bility of moral worth ; and, in short, in his 
competence of self-help in the transition from 
sin to grace. Ah, the ignorant — most probably 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 77 

wily priests, by their perverse and nefarious 
teaching, made man believe that by his sinful 
nature, inherited through Adam's Fall, he is an 
outcast from God ; a monster in sin and deprav- 
ity ; with a will in a state of bondage, no longer 
free in his Maker's service ;* and that if he 
would be saved from the wrath of God, and the 
pains of an endless hell, he must be — in fact, re- 
made^ yes, supernaturally re-horn^ and this change 
must be brought about without any agency on 
his part, of which he is declared, by the priest — 
in the assumed character of God's vicegerent on 
earth, not capable, but by God's mercy only ! 
In the sequel, these pretty specimens of an 
ostensibly Christian, orthodox theology, will be 
somewhat sifted; weighed in the scale of plain, 
common sense ; and, if possible, its friends and 
advocates be made to realize a proper sense of 
the guilt of their folly, their arrogance, and their 
sins ! 

* Luther wrote a Tract in defence of the doctrine of total 
depravity^ or the incompetence of the human will to do, hy 
nature^ what is pleasing to God, under the title " De Servo 
Arbitrio," thus betraying his preference for the St. Augus- 
tinean rather than the Christian derivation of his faith. Alas, 
alas, how man has been trifled with and insulted in the name 
of Jesus ! 



7* 



78 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

CHAPTER I. 

The Nature of the Perversion of the Human Will. 

According to tlie eighteenth and 'nineteenth 
articles of the Augsburg Confession — Schott's 
" unaltered" edition, the hypothetical progenitors 
of the human race — Adam and Eve, possessed a 
will, which — in all instances, was competent and 
inclined to prefer and do what is good, and, 
therefore, pleasing to God. The same would 
have been the lofty and enviable characteristic of 
the will of their descendants, had they not been 
vitiated by the Fall. But, alas, a dire and lit- 
tle to be apprehended catastrophe awaited them, 
and human volition — once so fair and unerring, 
was sadly and almost totally ruined, or, at least, 
so thoroughly perverted, that its ethic value was 
reduced to a trifle ; since this unfortunate event 
in man's primeval history, he is little better 
than a mere wreck of a once proud and happy 
humanity, and, moreover, hopelessly doomed to 
perdition, unless a timely and, of course, super- 
natural rescue is graciously provided to meet the 
doleful emergency. 

The Reformers — as appears from the articles, 
indicated in the preceding paragraph, teach briefly 
as follows on this interesting subject : " That 
man, in his fallen state, has a free will to live, to 
all appearance honorably, and to choose among 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 79 

those things, which his reason comprehends," etc. 
In matters, however, appertaining to spiritual 
life, his " perverted will works sin," as well as 
begets " evil doers and despisers of God" : the 
inevitable consequence of a will thus lamentably 
diseased and under bondage of sin. Hence — we 
are told, " without grace, assistance, and the 
operation of the Holy Spirit, man has not the 
power to become pleasing in the sight of God, 
or heartily to fear or to believe in God, or to cast 
out the innate evil propensity from his heart," 
etc. : forsooth a dreary and most repellent pic- 
ture, but, thank God, it is only a caricature; a 
slander ; not a reality ! 

Agreeably to the views here laid down, on 
the chimerical subject of a fallen and depraved 
human nature, and a consequent perverted, hu- 
m.an will, man — thrown upon his own resources, 
with a will and a heart in a frightfully abnormal 
condition, is a mass of vileness, signifying little 
more than the beast of the field — with the ex- 
ception of the little reason, that is still left to 
him ! What astounding ideas orthodox doctors 
and great reformers have of the wisdom and 
goodness of God : could a "heathen in his blind- 
ness," think more degradingly, or speak more ir- 
reverently, of his god ? First — their sample creed 
teaches, he creates and properly endows man ; 
second, he places him on the brink of a preci- 
pice ; third, when he has been dashed to pieces. 



80 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

he sends his physicians to heal him, or to find 
fault with him, if he is past the skill of the heal- 
ing art !* Oh God, what absurdity ; what mad- 
ness ; what a burning insult to thy name ! Such 
puerile, silly, and impious notions do not seem 
much as if they could be the fruit of a will that 
— under the Divine influence of a saving grace, 
has ceased to be perverse. Alas, the Reforma- 
tion too of the sixteenth century, needs, sadly 
wQ^di^, reformation ! 



CHAPTER II. 

The Origin of the Perversion of the Human Will. 

This perversion of the human will, or — in 
other words, this natural depravity of mankind, 
" Our churches likewise teaches," say the framers 
and signers of the Augsburg Confession, " that 
since the fall of Adam all men who are naturally 
born, are begotten and born in sin ; that is, that 
they are from the first moment of their existence 
full of evil desires and propensities, and can have 

* Buck — in his "Theological Dictionary," thus sums 
up, in a few words, the orthodox belief about fallen man : 
" Man in his fallen state, is a sinful, carnal, and perverse 
apostate, who can will only according to the nature of his 
apostasy, which is continually and invariably evil, without 
capacity to exceed its bounds into goodness, purity, and 
truth," etc. die heilige Einfalt ! 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL, gl 

no true fear of God, no true faith in God, of 
their own accord ; and that this inherent disease 
and natural depravity, is really sin, and still con- 
demns and causes eternal death to all those, who 
are not born again by baptism and the Holy 
Ghost," etc. 

This bold, unhesitating derivation of a per- 
verted human will, or natural depravity of man- 
kind, is extremel}^ unfortunate for the perpetuity 
and future prestige of orthodox dogmatics, as 
well as fatally damaging of the veracity of the 
Reformers, as I shall show before this topic will 
be brought to a close. I^o less certainly shall I 
make it appear how absolutely necessary it is for 
kindly-officious creed-makers to use the utmost 
caution in laying down systems of faith, not to 
teach anything but what — to common sense, com- 
mends itself, as plain, self-evident truth, lest the 
investigations of' science should, sooner or later, 
convict them of fallacy, and inevitably bring con- 
tempt and ridicule upon their nicely wrought 
and pompously set forth infallible dicta. The 
pith of this advice to inquisitors of the faith, is, 
say nothing but what is undoubtedly true, and 
never profanely no less than unwisely, think of 
honoring God, by wickedly defaming his work I 



82 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

CHAPTER III. 

Reference of the Augsburg Confession to St. Augustine for 
the Identification of this Doctrine. 

The Augsburgian Confessors seem to con- 
sider themselves perfectly safe, in teaching such 
wretched incongruities and absurdities, as a per- 
verted human will and the depravity of mankind, 
in the eighteenth and nineteenth articles of their 
most immaculate creed, under the shallow plea, 
that they have a precedent in the opinion of St. 
Augustine, bishop of Hippo, as if antiquity could 
be a warrant for the promulgation of any foolish 
whim, or childish caprice. They briefly thus 
write : " And in order that it may be known, 
that nothing new is pretended in this doctrine, we 
here introduce the very words of St. Augustine, 
who, in his third book of the ' Hypognosticon,' 
wrote as follows concerning free will : ' We con- 
fess that there is in all mankind a free will. For 
they all have a natural innate understanding and 
reason, not as if they could work out anything 
in matters pertaining to God, as, for instance, to 
love or fear God with all their hearts, but merely 
in temporal actions of their present life have they 
free will to choose good or evil,' " etc. 

It is a pretty state of things, indeed, when — in 
confirmation and justification of the truth of 
what we teach, we must invoke the opinion, or 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. §3 

sanction of so gloomy and bigoted a man as St. 
Augustine ; a man who had no more Scripture- 
warrant for the glaringly false and extravagant 
dogma of human depravity, or a perverted will 
of mankind, than any of his veracious succes- 
sors in the chair of infallible orthodoxy ; a man, 
notwithstanding his well-deserved distinction — 
among all sensible and intelligent people, for 
his blind devotion to a false and bigoted faith, 
which has so profoundly endeared him to the 
church-saints and infallible dogmatists of suc- 
ceeding ages. His debauchery in early life did 
not fail to warp his judgment and render his 
mind morose and gloomy : a sinister state of 
mind, which caused him to attribute the nat- 
ural aberrance of mankind to the machinations 
of the Devil, and an inherited corruption of the 
soul, descended from ancestral sin; thus wit- 
tily as well as naturally finding an apology, or, at 
least an extenuation, for his own former licen- 
tious habits in the universal depravity of man- 
kind!* 



* In his admirable work — " The History of the Intellectual 
Development of Europe," Professor Draper writes: "In his 
early years St. Augustine had led a frivolous and evil life, 
plunging in all the dissipations of the gay city of Carthage. 
Through the devious paths of Manichaeism, astrology, and 
skepticism, he at last arrived at truth,^^ etc. Alas, that so 
much of his truth should wear so wwtrue and forbidding an 
aspect ! 



84 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

CHAPTER IV. 

Keference of the Augsburg Confession, in its Eighteenth Ar- 
ticle to St. Paul (1 Corinthians ii. 14) for the Proof of 
this Doctrine.* 

If ever there has heen a book, which has been 
travestied, squeezed, stretched, inverted, reverted 
iindi perverted^ that abused, ill-fated book is, most 
emphatically, the Bible. There is hence, prob- 
ably, not a dogma, however chimerical, puerile, 
extravagant, or false, that has not been derived, 
directly or indirectly, from its voluminous pages, 
or attributed to its express or implied teaching. 
It has been innocently or guiltily the prolific 
source of sectism, monasticism, celibacy, mendi- 
cancy, the inquisition, auricular confession, the 
mass, and every abomination that comes under 
the category of a false and vicious religious sen- 
timent, or a crass and grotesque cultus. 

As an appropriate specimen of the preceding 
statement of facts, the reference of the Reform- 
ers to 1 Corinthians ii. 14, in proof of a perverted 
human will, as taught more especially in the 
eighteenth article of their diffuse and somewhat 
ill-defined creed, is a good instance in point. This 
famous passage, the occasion of so much mis- 
chief in theological lore, reads thus in the Eng- 
lish version : " But the natural man receiveth 

* The perversion, or bondage of the human will. 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 85 

not the things of God ; for they are foolishness 
unto him : neither can he know them, because 
they are spiritually discerned." This rendering 
of the Greek text, is utterly false as well as of 
most pernicious tendency, and sadly attests the 
carelessness or the incompetence of the authors 
of the Augsburg Confession; for the phrase — 
" the natural man," in Greek is psuchikos anihropos, 
which — according to Parkhurst, means "the ani- 
mal or sensual man," as opposed to the spiritual 
man. This is an eminently reasonable as well as 
indisputably true interpretation of this often 
misunderstood and misapplied Scripture. In- 
deed, daily experience teaches that rude, igno- 
rant, vicious people, are little apt to serious re- 
flections, or spiritual contemplations ; they are — 
as the Bible significantly avers, " of the earth, 
and earthly." It is plainly and solely for these 
most cogent reasons, that " they do not receive 
the things of the Spirit of God," etc., not because 
they are natural; for, in truth, it is only the nat- 
ural man that is a man in the proper sense of the 
word, and I cannot refrain from wishing with all 
my heart, that man might only be always natural, 
not as is too often the case, I fear, a mere pretence, 
a hideous mendacity ! 

I infer, then, that — as far as this Pauline teach- 
ing is in question, that the eighteenth article of 
the Augsburg Confession, together with its par- 
tial repetition in the nineteenth article of the 



SQ THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

same symbol of faith, is — to use a forensic phra- 
seology, null and void, as a proof-text of human 
depravity, and a consequent perverted human 
will. The Apostle was a zealot, a fanatic, but he 
was not reckless and inconsiderate enough to 
stultify himself to the orthodox extent of a 
Luther and a Melanchthon ! 



CHAPTER V. 



The Eestoration of Mankind to their Pristine Integrity, as 
taught in the Eighteenth Article of the Augsburg Confes- 
sion, and in the Fifth Chapter of the Epistle of St. Paul to the 
Eomans, from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Yerse, inclu- 
sively. 

First, as taught in the Augsburg Confession. — 
This confident and rather categorical teaching of 
the Reformers, consists, in short, in saying that, 
"through the Holy Spirit and by means of the 
Word of God," man receives grace and assistance, 
thus acquiring " the power to be again pleasing 
in the sight of God ; heartily to believe in him ; 
fear him ; and so cast out the innate evil propen- 
sity from his heart." 

Thus, it appears, that through divine grace, or 
supernatural interposition, set forth in this Lu- 
theran symbol, the primeval or Paradisiacal state 
of man is regained, and that, henceforth, his will 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 87 

is lioly and his life upright: as was — presump- 
tively, the case in the unfallen state of man. But 
if this is true, why exists so much perverseness 
and evil, sorrow and suiFering within the pale of 
the Christian Church? Here — if anywhere in 
the economy of grace, the divine and saving in- 
fluences must be enjoyed in all their amplitude 
and potency; the baneful ravages of Original 
Sin stayed ; and the lost image of the Creator 
restored. Is such the case ? Alas, no ! On the 
contrary, daily experience demonstrates that the 
Christian still errs, sins, and is — at best, in a state 
of probation. It must be so ; for a finite moral 
being is naturally, inevitably, and forever peccable. 
Upon his peccability is absolutely based the only 
condition of his moral and intellectual develop- 
ment. From this it irrefragably follows that 
these Protestant hierarchs entertained — ^in this 
article of their creed, exceedingly fallacious and, 
therefore, untenable views on this weighty and 
interesting subject; that, therefore, they really 
never had the divine sanction for such belief, 
otherwise mankind would necessarily see it real- 
ized ; and that, finally, the famous and grotesque 
doctrine of the Fall is simply a puerile specula- 
tion^ and the idea of the recovery of a lost hu- 
manity a pitiful illusion ! 

Second, as taught by St. Paul. — In the verses 
of the Epistle to the Romans indicated in the 
heading of this chapter, St. Paul compares the 



88 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

effects of the sin of Adam with those of the re- 
demption of Christ, and declares the latter to be 
not only fully equal to the former, putting the 
phrases " offence and grace, many sinners and 
many righteous," etc., in juxtaposition, and thus 
equalizing them, but he pronounces the blessings 
which we owe to Christ to be far superior to the 
pernicious consequences of Adam's transgres- 
sion, using the term "polio mallon," much more^ 
to convey his idea of the greater expansiveness 
and potency of the Gospel than of the Fall. 

It is difficult — as will be readily perceived by 
the intelligent reader, to reconcile the preceding 
thesis of the Apostle with the plain facts of his- 
tory and experience. For not only does hold 
good here what has been just said in the forego- 
ing paragraph, in respect to the peccant, adverse, 
and often sorrowful state of the redeemed, or — 
in other words, the Church of Christ, but, in ad- 
dition to that, it must be stated — what is no less 
of the greatest importance as well as relevance 
in the case, that, if Adam's sin has imbued all 
mankind with its deadly virus, the grace of God 
through Jesus Christ, has signally failed to be 
commensurately extensive in its benign and sav- 
ing influences. For since the introduction of 
Christianity into the world, millions upon mil- 
lions of human beings " have died in Adam," ac- 
cording to the orthodox creed, without a knowl- 
edge of Christ, and, therefore, without a partici- 



THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 89 

pation in his grace : the free gift^ not having come 
" upon them" — as the Apostle writes, " unto jus- 
tification of life." Besides, Christianism em- 
braces but a very small part of the human race, 
compared with the rest of mankind, who profess 
the different creeds known as Judaism, Parsee- 
ism, Brahminism, Buddhism, Islamism, and gen- 
tilism generally. Where then is the evidence of 
the righteousness and grace of Christ, abound- 
ing micch more, than the death and condemnation, 
entailed upon the whole human race through the 
offence of the hypothetical progenitor of the 
human race ? I am sorry to say there is none ! 
But I take no pleasure, in this regard, to inval- 
idate St. Paul's position, or to point out here a 
glaring antithesis, desiring simply to point out 
the clear, irrepressible fact in the case, which — 
concisely stated, is this, that Christ's soterial in- 
strumentalities are altogether independent of the 
silly dogma of Original Sin, and must be, there- 
fore, estimated as a measure, or scheme jper se ! 



CONCLUSION. 



In concluding this brief Essay, I may here 
remark — as the final result of this investigation, 
that the disparity between Adam's sin and Christ's 
grace, treated in the last chapter, is absolutely of 

8* 



90 THE PERVERSION OF THE HUMAN WILL. 

no account, eitlier for or against the Apostle's ar- 
gument in tlie premises, and for this very cogent 
and significant reason, that Adam — the presump- 
tive progenitor of mankind, has had no existence ; 
at least not as the first man, as human beings ex- 
isted upon the globe millennial ages prior to the 
assumed Adamic era. The interesting and im- 
portant science of geology has as certainly and 
invincibly established this fact, as astronomy has 
established the fact, that the moon's light is re- 
flected light, or daily experience that, that man 
is mortal ! Hence, there having been no Adam, 
he cannot have sinned; his sin cannot be im- 
puted to his posterity ; his posterity, accordingly, 
cannot be naturally in a lost state ; and, therefore, 
mankind need no restoration to an imaginary, orig- 
inally innocent and holy state ! 



VI. 

TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 



PEEFACE. 

The word Transubstantiation, is derived from 
the Latin transiibstantiatio, denoting change of 
substance, and " used by the scholastic writers 
of the Roman Catholic Church, to designate the 
change which is believed by the Roman Catho- 
lics, to take place in the Eucharistic elements of 
bread and wine, in virtue of consecration."* 

Buck, in his " Theological Dictionary," beside 
confirming the foregoing view, and presenting the 
question under a new and striking aspect, writes : 
" Transubstantiation is the conversion or change 
of the substance of the bread and wine in the eu- 
charist, into the body and blood of Jesus Christ," 
and — with much poignancy and significance, 
adds : " According to such transubstantiation, 
the same body is alive and dead at once, and 
may be in a million of different places whole and 
entire at the same instant of time ; accidents 



* Chambers's Encyclopaedia. 

91 



92 TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 

remain without substance, and substance with- 
out accident ; while a part of Christ's body is 
equal to the whole." 

The eucharistic theology, expressly or im- 
pliedly taught, in the monstrous dogma of tran- 
substantiation, is eminently suggestive of many 
and grave animadversions; for it is, alas, at 
once false, extravagant, wicked, and heretic, 
but I shall confine the investigations as well 
as strictures, in this Essay, to such of its salient 
features as shall most glaringly implicate the 
soundness of the faith and morals of the Roman 
Catholic Church. 



CHAPTER I. 



The Dogma of Transubstantiation is Proof of Apostasy from 
the Truth of the Gospel. 

The institution of the Lord's Supper, consid- 
ered as being in contrast with the dogma of 
transubstantiation, claims a prior attention in 
the investigation of this, no less flagitious than 
presumptuous imposture. — First — treating of the 
design of the institution of the Lord's Supper, I 
remark that it is commemorative, or reminiscen- 
tial ; for in the First Epistle of St. Paul to the 
Corinthians, xi. 22-26, the Apostle — who de- 
clares that what he writes on the important 



TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 93 

subject of the institution of this evangelical sac- 
rament, he "had received of the Lord," says 
niost positively that it is to be celebrated pre- 
eminently, nay, exclusively, as a memorial of 
Christ : " do this in remembrance of me," is 
the Lord's express injunction. To commemo- 
rate the hallowed life and death of Christ, is, 
therefore, the sole, or, at least, chief and pri- 
mary object of its institution. Can this state- 
ment — resting upon so plain a basis of facts, be 
denied ? If not, transubstantiationists may learn 
a useful lesson from it, and, perhaps, be led to 
the needful expurgation of their creed ! 

Second. — The design of the eucharistic insti- 
tution is, hence, not expiatory, or sin-forgiving, 
but, as has been stated, reminiscential of an ex- 
piation of sin already made. This is indubitably 
clear from the plain, categorical words of Christ, 
recorded in Matthew, xxvi. 26-28, whereof the 
bread and wine — symbolizing his body and 
blood : the former was given, and the latter shed, 
"for the remission of sins." Besides, in Mat- 
thew, XX. 28, Christ again asserts most unequiv- 
ocally, that he came into the world, " to give his 
life'"' — not an enchanted wafer of bread and a little 
grape-juice — " a ransom for many." The same 
paramount doctrine is inculcated in the First 
Letter of John, ii. 2, in which the sacred writer 
makes the consolatory announcement, that " Christ 
is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours 



94 TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 

only, but also for the sins of the whole world." 
Though the I^ew Testament abounds in similar 
passages ; nay, is founded upon the admission of 
a historic Jesus, not upon a priest-made god-man, 
the foregoing may be supposed to suffice. This 
simple teaching is very different from that im- 
plied in the sinister dogma of tran substantiation, 
which is falsely claimed to be sin-forgiving, and 
represents Christ as making a fresh, or iterated 
atonement every time he is allured from heaven 
into the consecrated eucharistic elements, by the 
juggling priest! 

Third. — In the formula of the institution of 
the Lord's Supper, the injunction of the Lord 
himself is, "Take, eat; drink ye all of this." 
This holy sacrament is, therefore, to be cele- 
brated by the joined use of bread and wine, and 
not by partaking of one element alone : the for- 
mer is the evangelical, the latter, the popish mode 
of perpetuating the communion. [N'otwithstand- 
ing, however, the plain letter of the eucharistic 
precedent, the Roman Catholics wickedly as 
well as foolishly, insist upon the lawfulness of 
employing but a single element in the solemn 
communion service. Thus Dens — as the organ 
of the " Council of Trent, concerning the most 
holy sacrament of the eucharist," says, in his 
" Moral Theology," etc., " Whosoever shall deny 
that in the adorable sacrament of the eucharist, 
the entire Christ is contained under each kind 



TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 95 

and under the single parts of each kind, when 
a separation is made; let him be accursed!" 
Apostasy from the truth of the Gospel, is too 
patent in these cases, to need further proof or 
illustration ! 



CHAPTER 11. 



By the ceremony of Transubstantiation, or the Ostensible 
Conversion of Bread and Wine in the Eucharist, the Priest 
assumes to make the God-Man, Jesus Christ. 

In his "Master-Key of Popery," etc., Gavin 
writes : " The priest goes to consecrate the bread 
and wine, and vnthfive words ^ obliges Jesus Christ 
to descend from heaven to the host: the bread 
and wine in unison, under the semblance of the 
wafer, with body, soul, and divinity, and to re- 
main there as high and almighty as he is in heaven," 
etc. In further illustration of the paramount 
weight and importance of transubstantiation, or 
the eucharist, in its character of the mass, Dens 
— in the Work, already referred to, communi- 
cates the following denunciation of one of the 
" Canons of the Council of Trent," on this sub- 
ject : " Whoever shall deny that in the sacrament 
of the most holy eucharist, are contained truly, 
really, and substantially the body and blood, to- 
gether with the soul and divinity of our Lord 
Jesus Christ, and, therefore, the entire Christ; 



96 TRA NS UBSTA NTIA TION. 

but shall say that he is in it only as in a sign, or 
figure, or virtue ; let him be accursed !" 

Here then, for the first time, in the world's his- 
tory, we meet with priests, who claim to be the- 
ogonists and androgenists : makers both of god and 
man ! What presumption ; what arrogance ; what 
infatuation, must possess the souls of men, who 
can so embolden themselves in the face of High 
Heaven, as to pretend at all to perform a miracle ; 
let alone so stupendous a miracle as the conver- 
sion of bread and wine into the dual creation of 
God-Man ! Ay, these impudent men aspire to 
be thaumaiurgists, and this, at once, explains their 
egregious temerity as well as their systematic and 
thoroughly rooted imposture. 

And is this shocking charlatanry; this impious 
rivalry of the Almighty; this bare-faced delu- 
sion and mummery of debauched priests, indeed 
Christianity ? Yes, but not Gospel- Christianity ; 
not an honest,, sincere Christianity ; nor — I will 
predict, a lasting Christianity, but a notoriously 
spurious, corrupt, pharisaical Christianity : in 
fact, only a disgusting pretence. Hence, I hesi- 
tate not to charge the adherents — believers, or 
mere feigners to be believers, in the extravagant 
dogma of transubstantiation, with the grievous 
sin of blasphemy against God, deserving rigid 
judicial inquisition, and the deep brand of public 
infamy ! 

According to the teachings of Blackstone, in 



TRA NS UBSTANTIA TION. 9 7 

his " Commentaries on the Laws of England," 
blasphemy against the Almighty : " punishable 
at common law by fine and imprisonment, or 
other infamous corporal punishment," etc., con- 
sists — among other offences, " In exposing the 
holy scriptures to contempt and ridicule, the very 
offences, committed in the pretended thauma- 
turgy of the mass, or the wicked figment of tran- 
substantiation. Substantially the same definition 
is given of this atrocious sin, as well as similar 
views entertained of its amenability to our laws, 
by Judge Smith, in his " Elements of the Laws, 
or Outlines of the System of Civil and Criminal 
Laws, in Force in the United States, and in the 
Several States of the Union," etc., and, there- 
fore, his notice of it : to avoid repetition, is here 
omitted. 

Referring now to our great lexicographer, Web- 
ster, for further information on this engrossing 
subject, I find that his ideas of blasphemy, more 
especially relevant to this investigation, are briefly 
thus expressed : '' An indignity offered to God, by 
words or writing ; that which derogates from the 
prerogatives of God. Mark ii." If transubstan- 
tiationists do not offer indignities to God, by words 
and in writing — in assuming creative powder, and 
derogate from his prerogatives, by their pretences 
of forgiving sins, in constantly offering up Christ 
anew — as a sacrifice for sin, then I am at a loss 

to know what blasphemy is, or who deserves 

9 



98 TRA NS VEST A NTIA TION. 

to be punished for so widely spread and so Lei- 
nous a crime ! 



CHAPTER III. 



The "Worship or Adoration of Christ, "the Onlj'-Begotten 
Son of God," under the Semblance of the Host, deified by 
the Consecration of the Priest. 

To make a deity by tbe consecration of bread 
and wine — as is claimed by the papacy, would 
be a wonderful feat, implying : if it is true, in- 
stead of being a fallacy, supernatural grace, 
while to adore, or worship a deity, thus made, 
must be absolutely the lowest pitch of human 
debasement. 'Nor is either such miracle-work- 
ing, on the one hand, or abject demeanor, on the 
other, the result of caprice, or blind impulse, but 
the deliberate acts of a systematic routine, and a 
deeply-rooted custom. For not only does the 
Roman Catholic Church approve of the making 
and worshiping of a god of bread and wine — 
consolidated into the host, or consecrated wafer, 
but it glorifies this article of its liturgic service, 
as the very acme of Christian orthodoxy, and the 
insignia of.the Divine approval : facts will verify 
and illustrate the statement. 

Gavin, with whom the reader is already famil- 
iar, makes the following appropriate communi- 
cation : " The papists teach and charge the people 



TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 99 

to adore the sacrament, but never to touch the con- 
secrated host, or wafer : this being a crime against 
the Catholic faith, and that all such as dare to 
touch* it, must be burned in the inquisition. 
Besides, they persistently and emphatically incul- 
cate the belief that the real flesh and blood of 
Jesus Christ is in the eucharist ; and that though 
the people cannot see it, they ought to submit 
their understanding to the Catholic faith," etc. 

If now we advert to Dens, ^vhose Moral Theol- 
ogy has long been the text-book in popish semi- 
naries, we shall find that he throws additional 
light on this, no less singular than astounding 
subject, in words to this effect : ^'Whoever," thus 
he writes, "shall affirm that in the holy sacra- 
ment of the eucharist, Christ, the only-begotten 
Son of God, is not to be adored even with the 
external worship of latria;^ and, therefore, that the 

* This made god is — it seems, not of the masculine but only 
of the neuter gender. Alas, that the neuter gender should 
be the height of papal deification ! 

" The real flesh and blood of Jesus Christ is in the euchar- 
ist," means constitutes the eucharist under the form of the 
host, after the consecration of the elements. 

f Only Christ, as God, or the Son of God, it is thought 
here, is to be worshiped, but this is clearly an error ; for the 
God-man, Jesus Christ, is the Savior, not the God alone ! 
How can the God be separated in the host from the man ; the 
host itself being presumed to be the God-man? As to the 
latria, it is — according to Webster, " The highest kind of 
worship, or that paid to God : distinguished by the Koman 
Catholics, from dulia, or the inferior worship paid to saints." 



100 TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 

eucharist is to be honored neither with peculiar 
festive celebration, nor to be solemnly carried 
about in procession, according to the laudable 
and universal rite and custom of the Church, or 
that it is not to be held up publicly before the 
people that it may be adored, and that its wor- 
shipers are idolaters ; let him be accursed !" 

What a heterogeneous jumble ! What absurd- 
ities and sham miracles ! The priest not only 
makes a god, but even the Son of God : the second 
person in the Holy Trinity, according to the de- 
cision of infallible orthodoxy, and when he is 
thus made, and formally recognized as a divinity, 
he is solemnly carried about in procession ; held 
up publicly before the people ; and adored even 
"with the external worship of lairia.^' To deny 
either the facts, or the credibleness and cogency 
of this signally extravagant Roman Catholic 
dogma, is to be accursed! What, in this free 
country too? Take care, Romanists, "liberty of 
speech" is a constitutional prerogative of the 
people of the United States, and they — who seek 
to hinder it, are base traitors ! 

The specimens of Roman Catholic faith, thus 
brought to our knowledge, are eminently re- 
markable for their purity and ethic excellence: it 
is too good "to be put under a bushel." Who, 
then, will go forth into heathen lands, and, having 
propagated this true and only saving faith, con- 
vert the degraded, idolatrous inhabitants, to "the 



TRANS UBSTA NTIA TION. IQl 

worship of God, in spirit and in truth," according 
to Christ's plain and emphatic teaching ? Thrice 
blessed, I doubt not, are they, who are admitted 
to these sublime mysteries ; to this most admir- 
able mode of worship ; nay, to this incomparable 
orthodox faith: pre-eminently "the pearl of great 
price !" 



CHAPTER IV. 



The Dogma of Transubstantiation leads to the Crime of 

Cannibalism. 

The phrase, to make a god, sounds singularly 
enough in unsophisticated Christian ears, or con- 
sidered in an absolute sense, but when it is virtu- 
ally found as a phenomenal feature in a formal, 
ostensibly Christian creed, faith is startled, and 
wonder itself stands aghast. But when, beside 
the conversion of a little baked dough and a little 
grape-juice, into an almighty God, we see this 
same God carried about in religious procession ; 
shown to crowds of deluded and fanatical devo- 
tees, of which it usually consists; then worshiped 
with profoundest humility and a boundless rever- 
ence; and finally eaten! we witness a credulity, 
and an imposture, which positively has had no 
parallel in any age or country of the civilized 
world. AVhat, to eat a priest-made god, and sub- 
ject him to all the chemical changes, incident to 

9* 



102 TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 

digestion, nutrition, growth, and decay, etc., of 
the human organism, and still persist that he is 
a god? Hide, for shame, deceivers! 

This belief in tran substantiation is — I feel 
bound to say, a belief in cannibalism, but its can- 
nibalism is peculiar in embracing not man merely, 
but also God, in its horrid bill of fare! and I, 
therefore, charge the Roman Catholics with the 
flagrant crime of iheophagism as wxll as anthro- 
pophagism, or the nefarious practice of eating the 
god-man, Jesus Christ, under the semblance of 
the host ! 

Cannibalism, being a contingency of the savage 
state of human society, history has rendered us 
familiar with its general prevalence as wxll as 
crass enormities ; for it is found to be as much a 
feature of savagism as war and pillage, revenge, 
or remorselessness. As systematic observers of 
cannibalism, however, the Roman Catholics — as 
far as the eating of the host is concerned, are 
paralleled only: as far as history throws any light 
upon this vile practice, by a single people, at once 
wild, rude, and savage — the 'New Zealanders, 
who: down to a recent period, indulged habitu- 
ally, we are informed, in the practice of cannibal- 
ism as a normal and quite innocent mode of sub- 
sistence. These ignorant, fierce, and brutish 
people were prompted to such revolting deeds, 
by their native, sensuous instincts. They stood, 
indeed, much upon a parity with the carnivorous 



TRANSUBSTANTIATION. 103 

beasts, whose prey consists of vanquished ani- 
mated nature : their taste for human flesh — under 
existing circumstances, being entirely natural, 
while the indulgence in it, in the earlier stages 
of their inherent and, perhaps, uncontrollable 
savagery, was, consequently, without guilt or re- 
proach. With the Roman Catholics, the case is 
radically different. They profess to be educated; 
to be Christians ! Hence they are supposed to 
know better what is proper and consistent in an 
advanced social state, than the savage New Zea- 
landers could know, in the condition of a grovel- 
ing animalism ; yet what do we really find to be 
the case ? that they are not only cannibals, in the 
common, or usually accepted sense of the term, 
but cannibals in an aggravated and eminently 
culpable form; for according to their own creed, 
deliberately framed, and carried out punctually 
as well as with great formality, they eat the con- 
secrated host, into which Jesus Christ — as God- 
man, descends from Heaven " with," says Gavin, 
"his body, soul, and divinity,"* etc. 

If such grotesque doctrine ; such fulsome cere- 
monial, is not most shamefully and wickedly 
trifling with sacred and divine things, and likely 
to fill the reflecting m.ind with disgust and ap- 

■^ Dens' version varies a little, and is in these words, that 
" the body and blood, together with the soul and divinit}' of 
our Lord Jesus Christ, are contained truly, really, and sub- 
stantially, in the most holy eucharist." 



104 TRANS UBSTANTIATION. 

athy towards all religion, what delinquency is ? If 
so signally an adulterated state of Christianity — 
both in faith and observances, is not indicative 
of criminal misdemeanor, and justly amenable 
to legal penalties, what abomination is? The 
article of faith, known in the Roman Catholic 
catechism as transubstantiation, is regarded by 
papistic orthodoxy, as the Alpha and Omega of 
a most perfect exhibition of a true and saving 
ordinance, and is — to say the least, an insult to 
God; a stumbling-block to human progress; and 
a disgrace to the boasted intelligence of the nine- 
teenth century of the Christian era. May even 
all remembrance of it, soon, very soon, perish 
in Lethe's dark, impetuous, ever onward-rushing 
waters ! 



CHAPTER y. 



The Host, or God-Man, as taught in the Dogma of Transub- 
stantiation, is liable to Corruption. 

In the composition of this chapter, I am guided 
chiefly by the teachings, contained in " Gavin's 
Master-Key of Popery," etc., referred to on pre- 
vious occasions in this paper. "If, then, Christ," 
says this writer, "is in the host, with his body, 
soul, and divinity, how comes it, that this host, 
hypostasis, or Christ, is sometimes corrupted or 
putrefied? The elements, bread and wine, natu- 



TRANSVBSTANTIATION, 105 

rall}^ subjected to decay, are ostensibly converted 
by the act of consecration, into the body and 
blood, soul and divinity of Jesus Christ, whence 
it inevitably follows, that the God-man, Jesus 
Christ, is thus doomed to corruption." Such, I 
may add, are the blasphemous consequences, to 
which the mendacious dogma of transubstanti- 
ation gives rise. The profanity of views, in- 
volved in such consequences, is unmistakable ; 
nor can its evil tendency be either ignored or 
long unfelt in the assertion of the religious sen- 
timent. Besides, the host corrupting, as is well 
known to be the case, that fact is positive proof, 
that it is not a hypostasis, or god-head : as is 
falsely taught and foolishly believed, but simply 
a material substance, set apart by means of cer- 
tain liturgic ceremonies, for presumed religious, 
or holy purposes. 

Again, the author just noticed, making a little 
variation in the gist of the inquiry, very perti- 
nently asks, "Whether the worms, engendered 
in the host, have their origin in the real body of 
Christ, or in the material substance of the host ?" 
If they have it in the body of Christ : he, in 
substance proceeds to say, it is clear that thai 
body is mortal, and not divine, and that, more- 
over, the dogma of transubstantiation , is utterly 
false : bread and wine remaining bread and wine 
after, as well as before, the consecration ! If, on 
the other hand, they proceed from the material 



106 TRANSVBSTANTIATION, 

substance, then — as has been just intimated, there 
cannot have been .conversion, or change of sub- 
stance, and the priestly pretensions to thauma- 
turgy on the occasion of the consecration of the 
eucharist, is, of course, a barefaced and contempt- 
ible imposture, altogether beneath the notice of 
a sober-minded and sensible Christian ! 

Finally, Gavin demands — with apparently great 
decision of tone, "What can we say now? If 
the worms and corrupted host are the real body 
of Christ, see what a value they have for him, 
when they throw it away like dirty water ; and, 
if it comes out of the running piscina^ into the 
street, the first dog or pig, passing by — which is 
of frequent occurrence in Spain, for example, 
may eat it. But should the host escape such 
grievous fatality, the priests — even to the preju- 
dice of their health, cannot refuse to eat it, how- 
ever much it may be decayed : before, of course, 
it has been cast away. One more question will 
conclude this part of the remarkable dogma of 
transubstantiation : Why do the priests carry the 
host in procession, and with so great veneration, 
together with lights and psalms, as if it was the 
real body and blood, soul and divinity of Jesus 
Christ?" Suffice! 

* A fish-pond.— G. 



VII. 

THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 



" Prove all things : hold fast that which is good." — 1 Thessa- 

lonians, v. 21. 

The Rite of Confirmation, in some churches, 
is the renewal or reassertion, generally by y<^ung 
people who have attained to years of discretion, 
of the baptismal vow ; in others, it consists in 
the ostensible confirmation of their baptism by 
children, under the suretyship of sponsors. In 
the former case, the confirm.er is presumed to be 
a fully responsible party in the solemn transac- 
tion ; in the latter he is still under guardianship, 
and, therefore, considered to be but partially a 
free agent in his participation of this rite. A 
more extended description of this salient rite, 
will be introduced here, that the curious reader 
may acquire as accurate an idea of its nature and 
import, in the dififerent Churches, as may be pos- 
sible, or deemed necessary for the proper under- 
standing of it. 

In his " Theological Dictionary," Buck thus 

107 



108 'J^HE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

concisely writes under this article : " Ecclesiasti- 
cal confirmation is the rite by which a person, 
arrived to years of discretion, undertakes the 
performance of every part of the baptismal vow, 
made for him by his godfathers and godmothers. 
In the Primitive Church it was done immediately 
after baptism,* if the bishop happened to be 
present at the solemnity. Throughout the East, 
it still accompanies baptism ; but the Romanists 
make it a distinct, independent sacrament, and 
the interval between baptism and confirmation is 
ordinarily, seven years. In the Church of Eng- 
land the age of the person to be confirmed, is 
not fixed," etc. 

A contributor to Chambers's Encyclopaedia, in 
treating of this theme, writes succinctly after this 
nti^thod : ^' Confirmation," he states, " is a Latin 
word, which signifies strengthening. In the ancient 
Church, the rite so named, was administered 
immediately after baptism, if the bishop was 
present, which is still the custom in the Greek 
and African Churches. In the Koman Catholic 
Church, for the last 300 or 400 years, the bishops 
have interposed a delay of seven years after in- 
fant baptism ; in the Lutheran Church, the rite 
is usually delayed for a period averaging from 
14 to 16 years; and in the English Church, from 

* That is, in the case of adults ; for strictly speaking, infant 
baptism did not then exist, and is, in fact, not a gospel insti- 
tution ! — Gr. 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 109 

14 to 18. But botli in the Lutlieran and Eng- 
lish Churches, the ceremony is made the oc- 
casion of requiring from those who have been 
baptized in infancy a renewal in their own per- 
sons of the baptismal vow, made for them by 
their godfathers and godmothers, who are thus 
released from their responsibility. E^one, I may 
further remark, can partake of the Lord's Sup- 
per, in these Churches, unless they have been 
confirmed," etc. 

A proper definition and illustration of the long 
cherished rite of confirmation, having been thus 
given, in the preceding paragraphs, I proceed to 
invite attention to various objectional features in 
this ecclesiastical institution, and to pass such 
strictures upon them, as the case may seem to de- 
mand, remarking only that in an investigation of 
this kind, it can hardly be avoided, however 
great may be the circumspection of the writer in 
the treatment of the subject, or marked and sin- 
cere the reluctance to censure grave and wide- 
spread breaches in the religious observances of 
society, and hence I can only add, that obstinate 
and dangerous diseases need a vigorous, some- 
times even, to use a quaint medical phrase, heroic 

treatment ! 

10 



110 THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 



CHAPTER I. 

The Growth and Consequent, Concomitant Changes, both of 
the Human Body and Mind. 

First, the Growth and Consequent, Concomi- 
tant Change of the Human Body. — When the 
human body is in a state of growth, or develop- 
ment, it undergoes great and ceaseless changes, 
both in size, strength, and appearance; it is, in 
fact, eminently plastic and variable. It is at first 
little, feeble, and in constant need of care and 
sympathy. By-and-by its size almost perceptibly 
enlarges ; its vigor increases apace ; and eventu- 
ally it becomes adult, or of full stature. In the 
progress of its maturation, it, therefore, passes 
through the various well-defined stages of baby- 
hood, childhood, and juvenility, to a fullness of 
growth and completeness of structure, and, 
hence, it is never the same either in state or ap- 
pearance; in anatomical outline or functional 
activity. With an altered state of age and 
growth, and a corresponding alimentary condi- 
tion, its food also is difierent: now it is simply 
milk, afterwards vegetables, then a vegetable and 
flesh diet in suitable combination, or — as St. Paul 
substantially states it. The robust eats strong 
food ; the weakling confines himself to the use of 
herbs. The same parity of grow^th and adaptation 
to varying wants, exists in regard to the clothing 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. \\\ 

or the cover of the body : it requiring a constant 
change of fit to answer its necessities and properly 
to set off its contour; and, hence, the appropriate 
distinction of children's and youths' and men's or 
women's garments, not to mention the colors, 
styles, and textures, which have regard — more or 
less, to the age, the taste, the comfort, or the 
pursuit of the wearer. 

Second. — The Growth and Consequent, Con- 
comitant Change of the Human Mind. — The 
human mind — whether it is material or imma- 
terial : the question not being relevant to this 
investigation, I shall not stay to inquire, is not 
only intimately connected with the body, and, 
hence, profoundly participates in its ill or good 
fortune, as well as in all its mutations and wants, 
but it has, besides, an unmistakable parallelism 
of growth, and the consequent concomitants of 
changed conditions and needs, with the body. 
Its modes of thought; its exaltations or dejec- 
tions; its aspirations and aversions, etc., are all 
the natural and inevitable results of the different 
periods of life, and the consequent modified, men- 
tal states, as well as altered capacities, and, there- 
fore, intellectual susceptibilities. The ^^outh's 
thoughts and wishes ; in short, his soul-wants 
and soul-traits, are strikino;lv diverse from the 
child's ; the child's from those of the waddling, 
prattling babe; and, as to the man or the woman, 
it is abundantly evident, that neither the one nor 



112 THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

the other could any longer he either content or 
happy in the nursery : ^' When," says the Apostle 
— quoted in the preceding paragraph, '' I was a 
child, I spake as a child; I understood as a child; 
I thought as a child : hut when I hecame a man, 
I put away childish things." 



CHAPTER 11. 



From the Fact that our Thoughts vary with our Intellectual 
Growth and Psychical State, it follows that the Kite of Con- 
firmation — which is a Tacit Interdict of Personal Research 
into the Nature of our Faith, is a Manifest Violation of the 
Laws of Mind, and, hence, of the Laws of God. 

The human mind heing thus — as I have demon- 
strated, variable with age and change of develop- 
ment, and hardly ever, for any great length of 
time, the same either in state, capacity, or con- 
ception, the inference will he deemed legitimate, 
that the Church in the rite of Confirmation, not 
only ignoring this law of intellectual mutation, and 
a consequent corresponding variation of thought, 
but flatly acting in opposition to it, is the cause of 
grave sin, and, therefore, deserves severe animad- 
version. 

The subjects of confirmation are generally cat- 
echumens, or young people, who — by a course of 
catechetical instruction, are ostensibly prepared 
for church-membership. Many of the youths, thus 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. II3 

catechised, are — as is to be presumed, thoughtless 
and indifferent, and derive, of course, little or no 
benefit from their attendance ; while the bulk of 
them — owing to the chiefly metaphysical nature 
of the instruction, cannot comprehend, and, con- 
sequently, not appreciate it. Thus ill-qualified 
and incompetent properly to realize the import- 
ance and solemnity of this rite, they offer them- 
selves — seldom quite voluntarily, or from a desire 
of a higher spiritual life, for confirmation, having 
previously made an orthodox and formal declara- 
tion of their faith, and, in this manner, mostly — as 
has been intimated, under external influences, or 
the force of custom, dedicate themselves to the 
Saviour, Jesus Christ. 

This c/uYtZ-dedication — strange as it may seem 
in the premises, is for life, and implies no change 
of faith; no questioning of its soundness or its 
propriety ! What the catechumens have learned, 
they are taught to be the Gospel of Jesus Christ, 
and they are, therefore, asked — before the sol- 
emnization of the rite of confirmation, " Whether 
they will continue faithful to it tiniil death,'' and the 
dictated answer is, " Yes." According to another 
formula, the candidates for church-membership 
are asked, " Whether they will now ratify and 
confirm the solemn promise and vow made at 
their baptism, thus acknowledging themselves 
bound to believe and do all those things, to the 
observance of which, they then obligated them- 

10* 



114 THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

selves," and the reply is, " Yes," or some other 
affirmative phrase of the same or a similar import. 
But it is needless to quote examples, showing that 
the creed-assent at the time of confirmation, is to 
be a life-long, and, hence, unalterable creed ? All 
the religious denominations believe themselves to 
be possessors of the only true Shibboleth, and it 
is, therefore, to be taken for granted that any ac- 
cession to their churches is to be permanent, and 
unquestioned. Hence, no provision is made for a 
change of views ; no encouragement given to re- 
vise the inculcated articles of faith ; and to seek 
a decision by personal research. E^o, not a word 
is said of a mere provisional indoctrination, and, 
a consequent probable, future modification of 
opinion, or an altered attitude toward the Church, 
and, perhaps, religious belief generally. IsTo : the 
promises and vows of the confirm ers, are to be 
as immutable and irrevocable as the laws of the 
ancient Medes and Persians ! 

I^ow, it cannot but be the case, that at least 
some, who have been thus brought within the 
ecclesiastical fold, will, by-and-by, alter their 
opinions, and adopt a quite difierent creed, 
whence it follows that they will be, more or 
less, guilty of perjury, and that this heinous sin 
is to be mainly attributed to those, who have in- 
considerately or wantonly, exacted an oath, or — 
what in this instance is tantamount to it, a vow 
and promise, of life-long obligation. Many others, 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. II5 

who continue nominally within the pale of the 
Church, are tossed by doubts and misgivings, 
but, governed by prudential motives, they assume 
chiefly a passive position, being ostensibly church- 
members, without cordial assent, or genuine sym- 
pathy ; and, therefore, they too are virtually per- 
jured, and another grave crime is consequently 
added to the voluminous and repellent calendar 
of Church-oiFences : simply because it wickedly 
dares to violate, or to disregard with a shameful 
indiflerence, Grod's paramount laws of the huroan 
mind ! 



CHAPTER III. 



The Kite of Confirmation is based upon Much False Teaching, 
and, in so far, it is Wrong, and should be amended. 

The catechisms, which usually constitute the 
text-books for the indoctrination of youths, pre- 
viously to their admittance to church-member- 
ship, are — with rare exceptions, greatly deformed 
by false and pernicious teaching. isTotwithstand- 
ing this is undeniably the case, the candidates for 
confirmation are required to accept — under sol- 
emn vows and promises, unconditionally and for 
the rest of their lives, the dogmas set forth in 
them, and held up accordingly to mankind as 
Divine and infallible religious truths. It is 
positively shocking to think how egregiously 



116 "^HE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

unsophisticated mankind have been so long dealt 
with, by the conventionally recognized teachers 
of religion ! But " to the law and to the testi- 
mony." 

Without a firm belief in a Devil and a host of 
his sable angels, no body could formerly think of 
being a Christian, and, hence, this demoniacal 
dogma figures largely in all orthodox creeds, 
but, thank God ! it is now so far obsolete, that a 
really intelligent person cannot be found, who 
shares so silly and ridiculous a notion : ig- 
norant and superstitious people alone — swayed 
by long habit, still cling with some pertinacity 
to the old, waning phantom. — The existence of 
Adam and Eve : as the hypothetical progenitors 
of the human race, is proved on the best evi- 
dence, to be a myth ; it being impossible to be 
true, as human beings most undoubtedly inhab- 
ited this globe, millennial ages prior to their 
time. The science of geology is positive on this 
point, and its proofs are invincible. E^ow, they 
failing to be real, it follows, of course, that the 
dogmas, based upon their falsely assumed reality, 
must also fail, or — in other words, must be false, 
and that, accordingly, the notions of the fall^ or 
original sin ; of the imputation of Adam's sin to 
his posterity; of the atonement of this sin by 
Jesus Christ, etc., have no foundation in fact, 
and are, therefore, simply myths, with which — 
during many ages, mankind have been most 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. II7 

shamefully and wickedly gulled. Alas, what 
temples does falsehood and superstition raise to 
the Most High ! 

The doctrine of an endless hell, is at once 
shocking and unreasonable, as well as incom- 
patible with the idea of justice. A just God 
spurns it as an insult to his wisdom and good- 
ness ; and only unfeeling and fanatical creed- 
makers and their pitiable dupes, are capable of 
the belief of this monster birth of the human 
mind. All Divine retribution is moral : it can 
be, in short, only ameliorative.- — The belief in a 
trinity of Divine persons, all of whom alike 
possess complete godhead, thus clearly making 
three gods, is growing very unsteady, and even 
a child that is a little familiar with numeration, 
knows that three are not one, and that one is not 
three ! Alas, the holy trinity too will soon cease 
to have a place in dogmatics, and converts will 
no longer be obliged to indorse an absurd and 
blasphemous fallacy, to secure an entrance into 
the Church. 

The idea, that baptism is regeneration, and 
which is largely taught in some of the Churches, 
is chiefly based upon the text : in the Epistle of 
St. Paul to Titus, iii. 5. But the phrase, " by 
the washing of regeneration," in that passage, 
is idiomatic, and simply denotes that baptism by 
immersion, is an emblem of an ameliorated future 
life of the convert; and the notion that simple 



11^ THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

baptism is regeneration, is no less false than it is 
extravagant. Given that it is true, v^hat need 
would there be of conversion ; atonement, etc. ? 
As to the Lord's Supper, in which — ^we are told, 
the very body and blood of Jesus Christ are re- 
ceived by the communicants, I have irrefragably 
shown in my Work on this sacrament^ that it is 
primarily and essentially reminiscential ; and, 
therefore, the belief in a real presence in the 
eucharist, is both a fallacy and an evident per- 
version of its true intent. ISTay, an aggravated 
species of cannibalism, and in close kinship with 
transubstantiation.* 

The articles of faith, known as regeneration ; 
inspiration; preordination; justification by faith 
alone without works; the day of judgment, etc., 

* T*he Real Presence in the eucharist, is likewise the ac- 
cepted helief of " one school of divines in the Anglican 
Church," writes a contributor to " Chambers's Encyclopce- 
dia:'' a belief which became very prominent in the time of 
Laud, and has been revived in the late Tractarian Movement, 
etc. According to the 28th article of the creed of the Prot- 
estant Episcopal Church, the use of the Lord's Supper, " is — 
as appears from the ' Book of Common Prayer,' a partaking of 
the body and blood of Christ." This partaking of Christ, 
it is added is " only after a heavenly and spiritual manner." 
If so, why is it a partaking of Christ's body and blood, and 
not rather of his redemption made through the instrumental- 
ity of his body and blood ? The idea of the Real Presence 
still seems here to linger and dominate, or in other words to 
reflect in some measure, the 10th article of the Augsburg 
Confession ! 



\THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. Hg 

I shall not consider at length in this place, only 
adding that they are all alike untenable, being 
without the least evidence of truth or reason in 
their behoof, and radically nothing but blank de- 
lusions, as well as gross misrepresentations of 
facts. Indeed, a thorough criticism of the creeds 
of the diiFerent orthodox Churches, would leave 
very little to the unfortunate candidates for con- 
firmation to " swear by," and, therefore, not too 
rudely to shake their confidence in the hallowed 
*' traditions of the fathers," I will leave them to 
their own reflections ; assuring them that the 
time is not far distant, when orthodoxy will 
be less prevalent than it is now, and truth — 
clothed in the majesty of her strength, will tri- 
umph gloriously in the earth ; or — in the perti- 
nent language of our distinguished poet, Bryant : 

" Truth, crush'd to earth, shall rise again : 
The eternal years of God are hers. 
But error, wounded, writhes with pain, 
And dies among his worshipers." 



CHAPTER IV. 

The Conclusion. 

From the results of the foregoing disquisition, 
it is evident that — if the rite of confirmation is 
to be retained in the Christian cultus, the creeds 



120 THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 

of the orthodox Churches must undergo a radi- 
cal change ; for fallacies have been taught long 
enough, and they have already done mischief 
enough. Catechumens claim to be sworn upon 
the truth, and not — as heretofore, upon de- 
lusions and myths. 'Nor must the creeds to be 
inculcated be any longer composed of metaphysi- 
cal speculations; vain traditions; talmudic rev- 
eries, and incredible fictions, but of truth : of 
lessons and facts for every-day life. And they 
must be grounded chiefly in the moral and re- 
ligious nature of man ; its capabilities ; and its 
wants : in its relations and duties towards God 
and man. But to work well, they must premise 
that this nature is uncorrupt, and, therefore, in a 
healthy normal state ; that, hence, it is suscep- 
tible of sound principles and the practice of vir- 
tue; that it has, in brief, unimpaired volition; 
and that, consequently, man is a free-agent, and 
— as far as spontaneity is implied, alone respon- 
sible for his actions. 

Their dual basis must be — as Jesus teaches, 
Matthew, xxii. 37-40, love to God and man : on 
these two commandments — it is satisfactory to 
know, " hang all the law and the prophets." By 
a proper study of the attributes of God, in his 
works and providence, we cannot but love and 
adore him ; seek to do his will ; be thankful for 
all his manifold blessings ; and thus be humbly 
and cheerfully resigned to our destiny. Man, 



THE RITE OF CONFIRMATION. 121 

too, needs but be properly apprehended in respect 
to his capacities and wants, to induce us to ob- 
serve a suitable conduct towards him, or — as 
Jesus again, in substance, teaches, Matthew, vii. 
12 : Do to him, as — under similar circumstances, 
we should wish him to do to us : for this social 
precept, he assures us, is likewise " the law and 
the prophets," in its relation to the human fam- 

iiy- 

Here, then, and in this way, we must set about 
in the building up of our creeds. They must 
be — as we have seen, ethico-religious in their aim 
and character ; plain, practical in their tendency ; 
easily understood with little application, by all 
persons of common intelligence. Commenta- 
ries and glossaries must be made absolutely 
superfluous by their simplicity, perspicuity, and 
directness. Such being the case, every one, in 
possession of them, will not only know what is 
proper for himself to do or let undone, but he 
will be able also to teach others in what behooves 
them; thus, as may be readily perceived, the 
members of society will be pious in their relation 
toward God ; moral in their deportment toward 
each other; and, in both respects, thoroughly 
content and happy ! 



n 



■VIII. 



THE NATIONAL NEED OF A PRE-SEPULCHRAL 
INQUISITION. 



A SOMEWHAT careful survey of the moral aspect 
of society, ends in the unpleasant conviction, that 
it is exceedingly corrupt. And it is no exag- 
geration or calumny to say, that its morals have 
never been worse, or more decidedly in need of 
reform. Man's course of conduct, instead of being 
upward and elevating in its aim, seems — in most 
instances, to be only downward, and, hence, de- 
grading. Many exceptions, of course, exist. If 
this was not the case, the scene of ruin and de- 
formity would be, indeed, too disheartening and 
painful to be contemplated without a shudder. 
For so vastly are vice and Godlessness in the 
ascendency that the good, who govern their lives 
by virtuous principles, are — compared with the 
bad, who are swayed in their conduct by lust and 
selfishness, but the waning remnant of a truer 
and a nobler specimen of manhood ! 

122 



' THE NATIONAL NEED. 123 

What is extremely singular and deserves espe- 
cial attention, is, that this moral depravity pre- 
vails, nay, is absolutely rampant, in the very 
presence of Bibles, and tracts, and missionaries, 
and temperance societies, and Fulton prayer- 
meetings, and "Young Men's Christian Associa- 
tions," and the " Societies for the Suppression of 
Vice," and the preaching of the Gospel, and Sab- 
bath-schools, and the solemn teachings and warn- 
ings of Moses and of Jesus Christ, and the Law, 
frowning amid the thunders of Sinai, and, finally 
of the Gospel, feelingly and lovingly entreating 
from Calvary, — Repent." What is to be done; 
for Israel — once so chaste, has fallen by the un- 
circumcised Philistine, and virtue is in bondage 
while vice triumphs ? Alas, the best heritage of 
man : his moral integrity — the salient image of 
God among men, must not be allowed to suf- 
fer further damage, and contract a still deeper 
and more indelible stain, without a prompt and 
vigorous eifort to check its headlong career, 
and by thus applying a suitable remedy, once 
more make glad the heart, tossed and torn by 
sin, with the fair and pleasant fruit of righteous- 
ness.. 

The fact is too patent to need proof, that the 
belief in future punishment — as it is usually 
taught in Church-creeds, is daily rapidly losing 
ground, and that the number of persons within 
the pale of Christianity, who still make it an ar- 



324 ^^^ NATIONAL NEED OF 

tide of their faith, is small, or, at least, confined 
to the less intelligent and blindly orthodox part 
of society. The consequence is, that evil practices 
are indulged in without restraint, or qualms of 
conscience ; that, hence — owing to the widely pre- 
vailing corruption of morals, mutual confidence 
is naturally much impaired; fraud, violence, and 
infidelity, have become the order rather than the 
exception, of the social state ; and a general feel- 
ing of distrust ; a want of reciprocal respect ; a 
mutual estrangement, pervade and harass, more 
or less, all ranks and conditions of society. What 
is most proper to do in so serious an emergency? 
I may reply, in the pertinent language of the 
old adage, "Where there is a will, there is a 
way." 

The ancient Egyptians — justly celebrated for 
their distinguished wisdom and advanced civiliza- 
tion, had adopted a method of furthering moral- 
ity, and making even the most giddy and vicious 
of their people, pause and refiect amid the most 
potent allurements to sin and shame. It consisted 
briefly in subjecting every inhabitant of the land 
— irrespective of his social condition, to a post- 
mortem judicial scrutiny of his character, and 
the decision of his judges according to his good 
or evil fame. The result was an honored or dis- 
graced name ; an honorable burial, or a peremp- 
tory denial of a place among the revered and 
hallowed dead of Egypt's worthy citizens, who — 



A PRE-SEPULCHRAL INQUISITION. 125 

havins^ been weis-hed in the balance of Nem,esis, 
were not found wanting !* 

Treating of the dogma of a final judgment, 
which awaited the departed souls in Hades, (ac- 
cording to Egyptian, mythic belief,) Professor 
Draper, in his " History of the Intellectual Devel- 
opment of Europe," makes some highly interest- 
ing communications on that momentous subject, 
after which he expatiates more at length on the 
pregnant theme, which it is the purpose of this 
Paper, especially to discuss and properly to elu- 
cidate ; that is, on the ^re-hadean judgment of the 
dead, which took place in the present world, and 
durins: the interval between the death and the time 
allotted for the burial of the deceased. I shall here, 
accordingly, introduce the curious reader to both 
kinds of Egyptian jurisprudence : '' At death," 
thus writes this learned author, " the merits of 
the soul were ascertained by a formal trial before 
Osiris in the shadowy region of Amenti — the 
under world, in presence of the four genii of 
that realm, and of forty-two assessors. To this 
judgment the shade was conducted by Horus, 
who carried him past Cerberus, a hippopotamus, 
the gaunt guardian of the gate. He stood by in 
silence while Anubis weighed his heart in the 

* Nemesis was the goddess that rewarded virtue, and pun- 
ished vice. This high office well became her ; for as she taught 
men their duty, they could not plead ignorance in default of 
a virtuous life. 

11^ 



126 THE NATIONAL NEED OF 

scales of justice. If his good works preponderated, 
he was dismissed to the fields of Aahlu — the Ely- 
sian Fields ; if his evil, he was condemned to 
transmigration.* 

" But that this doctrine of a judgment in an- 
other world" — continues the Professor, '•' might 
not decline into an idle legend, it was enforced by 
a preparatory trial in this — a trial of fearful and 
living import. From the sovereign to the mean- 
est subject, every man underwent a sepulchral 
inquisition. As soon as any one died, his body 
was sent to the embalmer's, who kept it for forty 
days, and for thirty-two in addition the family 
mourned ; the mummy, in its coffin, was placed 
erect in an inner chamber of the house. Kotice was 
then sent to the forty-two assessors of the district; 
and on an appointed day, the corpse was carried 
to the sacred lake, of which every nome, and, in- 
deed, every large town, had one toward the west. 
Arrived on its shore, the trial commenced ; any 
person might bring charges against the deceased, 

* In his profound and interesting Work — " Die Symbolik 
und Mythologie der alten Yolker, besonders der Griechen," 
Creuzer says the word Amenthes — the same as Amentus, is 
synonymous with the G-reek 'u:Edes, Hades, and that its root is 
Ement, signifying occidens, 'erebos : infernwn sedes, or the 
lower regions. — G. 

According to this instructive and indefatigable writer, the 
dread name Ehadamanthus, is composed of the roots Rat and 
Ement : the prince of darkness, and one of the judges of 
hell.— G. 



A PRE-SEPULCHRAL INQUISITION, 127 

or speak in his behalf; but woe to the false ac- 
cuser. The assessors then passed sentence ac- 
cording to the evidence before them ; if they 
found an evil life, sepulture was denied, and, in 
the midst of social disgrace, the friends bore 
back the mummy to their home, to be redeemed 
by their own good works in future years ; or, if 
too poor to give it a place of refuge, it was buried 
on the margin of the lake, the culprit ghost wait- 
ing and wandering for a hundred years. On 
these Stygian shores the bones of some are still 
dug up in our day ; they have remained unsep- 
ulchred for more than thirty times their predes- 
tined century. Even to wicked kings a burial 
had thus been denied. But, if the verdict of 
the assessors was favorable, a penny was paid 
t6 the boatman Charon for ferriage ; a cake was 
provided for the hippopotamus Cerberus ; they 
rowed across the lake in the baris, or death-boat, 
the priest announcing to Osiris and the unearthly 
assessors the good deeds of the deceased. Ar- 
riving on the opposite shore, the procession 
walked in solemn silence, and the mummy was 
then deposited in its final resting-place — the cat- 
acombs. From this," adds the distinguished au- 
thor, " it may be gathered that the Egyptian re- 
ligion did not remain a mere speculative subject, 
but w^as enforced on the people by the most 
solemn ceremonies," etc. 

It may readily be conceived what a powerful 



128 THE NATIONAL NEED OF 

check to licentiousness as well as a most whole- 
some and seasonable stimulus to virtue, such an 
institution must be; ay, must he, from the very 
nature of the case. For a love of fame, or the 
desire of being well thought of by our fellow- 
beings, is an integral part of our mental consti- 
tution, and to it, probably, more than to anything 
else — taking the bulk of mankind for our stand- 
ard of estimate, must be due the sense of honor; 
the persistent demonstrations in behoof of virtue, 
and the complaisance of manners, which still 
assert their presence, or urge their claims in the 
community. This ancient people — renowned 
among the nations of the earth, for its social 
eminence, and scientific attainments, understood 
well the springs of human action, and wisely 
adopted a species of discipline, which was in 
strict and genial accord with the end evidently 
designed to be accomplished through tlieir instru- 
mentality, thus authoritatively guiding and gov- 
erning, while the citizen flattered himself with 
the idea that he was simply yielding to the dic- 
tates of a natural impulse, or the evident craving 
of instinct. Can any government plan more 
wisely for its people, or promote more effectually 
its amelioration ? 

On the other hand, what sorrow, shame, woe, 
and ineifable misery, must the condemned and 
rejected dead have caused his relations and 
friends ! Their good names were disgraced, 



A PRE-SEPULCHRAL INQUISITION. 129 

perhaps their prospects in the future, blighted, 
on account of his bad and disreputable life. 
What tears — on such heart-rending occasions, 
must have been shed ; what regrets endured ; 
what mortification entailed, on account of his 
evil life and terrible fate ; a life excluding him 
from a participation in the venerated, sacred 
rites of burial; a life condemned by a formal 
and solemn inquisition of his country-men, as 
that of an outcast from the coveted fellow-ship of 
both the living and the dead; a life ending in 
ominous night! What can be more likely, or 
natural, or, indeed, expedient, under such de- 
plorable circumstances, than for the profoundly 
stricken relatives and friends of such an ill-fated 
mortal, solemnly to warn each other lest they 
too, or, at least, some of them, might fare no 
better than the doomed and dishonored dead. 
With what renewed zeal would parents be likely 
to strive to bring up their children virtuously ; 
usefully; honorably. How, in short, neighbor 
would admonish neighbor to take warning in 
time; and how all — cognizant of the dire fact, 
would feel actuated by new and increased im- 
pulses, earnestly and steadfastly to devote them- 
selves to the practice of righteous and praise- 
worthy lives ! 

Man without the grace and beauty of virtue, 
and true social worth, is simply a pretense, an 
illusion, and unfit for the honorable enjoyment 



130 "J^HE NATIONAL NEED OF 

either of the present or the future world : as the 
devout and ethically rigid people of the Nile 
already realized forty centuries ago. Such being 
in substance, undeniably the case, could we not, 
as a nation, whose hallowed and incomparable 
free-institutions can be upheld only and perpet- 
uated successfully, by dint of the virtuous lives 
of the citizens, found a similar, most useful and 
estimable institution, and thus make it a law of 
the land, that every citizen in the Republic, 
should be doomed immediately after death, to 
pass through a solemn, judicial ordeal, the object 
of which, would most certainly prove to be an 
immeasurable benefit, both to the individual and 
the nation ? There is, I doubt not, no lever, in 
the entire science of morals, at all comparable 
with this Egyptian device for the promotion of 
virtue and elevated moral sentiments, and — as 
American society, as well as society generally : 
as far as it manifests itself in all civilized coun- 
tries, is evidently rapidly declining from its 
pristine, ethic excellence and glory, virtue alone 
can prove an efiectual remedy against the im- 
pending evil, let us not delay to hasten to the 
rescue, and — though professedly Christians, be 
not ashamed to learn of Heathens, how to foster 
and carry out upright principles ; make human 
life honorable ; and — without hardly a chance of 
failure, cause a nation to be eminently prosperous 
and happy ! To which, I will only further add, 



A PRE-SEPULCHRAL INQUISITION. 131 

as a reasonable approval and illustration of the 
preceding thesis, the following pithy couplet of 
Herrick : 

" Eacli must, in virtue, strive for to excel ; 
The man lives twice, who lives the first life well." 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 



PEEFACE. 



One of tlie most remarkable phenomena of the 
human race, is the universal existence of religious 
ideas : a belief in something supernatural and 
divine, and a worship corresponding to it. The 
account of historians and travelers, purporting 
that they have met with savage tribes or barbaric 
nations, who were utterly destitute of all traces 
of religion, must be regarded as the result of 
superficial observation or hasty inference, and 
which cannot, therefore, be admitted as an ex- 
ception to the general rule, until future investi- 
gations shall have corroborated it. 

A question of some interest is the inquiry. 
What causes — objectively considered, mainly ex- 
cite the religious faculties of the soul, and inspire 
acts of devotion ? Timor fecit deos, is an adage 
of classic celebrity, yet it must be received with 
some qualification ; for though the terrible man- 
ifestations of nature — as thunder and lightning, 
earthquakes, tempests, etc., impress the untutored 

132 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 133 

mind with sentiments of the most intense alarm 
and anxiety, and suggest to it the necessity or 
the propriety of a propitiatory offering to the of- 
fended or destructive god, they are, by no means, 
the only exciters of the religious principle, but 
constitute a mere, though important unit, in a se- 
ries of causes resulting in the same weighty se- 
quence. Such, for instance, are all those striking 
displays in the external world, which create won- 
der, surprise, or aversion ; fill the soul with de- 
light or gratitude ; overwhelm it with a sense of 
its insignificance and helplessness ; carry convic- 
tion of guilt and danger to a slumbering con- 
science ; or excite a feeling of admiration for the 
romantic and the beautiful. All such, and simi- 
lar outward causes, conspire to stimulate the soul 
into a genial sympathy; to call forth in it the 
reflections and emotions, which will insure its re- 
ligious culture; and to bring it into a constantly 
increasing proximity to God.* 

The term Idolatry^ is derived from the Greek 
eidolon, signifying an image, and latreno, meaning 
to worship. Hence idolatry is— according to 
some authors, idol- worship, or the worship of 
idols. This definition of the use of idols, is rad- 
ically false ; for the idols were primarily not wor- 

* The author's work, entitled, "The Heathen Keligion in 
its Popular and Symbolical Developnaent," from which this 
preface is taken, is here respectfully commended to the atten- 
tion of the reader. 

12 



134 HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 

shiped at all, nor, in any sense, intended to be 
worshiped, but they were simply instituted in 
the natural course of the religious development 
of mankind, to represent and, consequently, com- 
mend the various attributes and creative energies 
of the Supreme Being, displayed in the august 
works of his hands, which — being deified, were : 
in a subordinate sense, designated and treated as 
gods. It was these gods, symbolized by appro- 
priate idols, that were worshiped, or that re- 
ceived divine honors, among the heathen. It 
was emphatically the worship of God, or the 
Infinite Deity, contemplated and adored in the 
analysis of his being and the manifestations of 
his pre-eminent wisdom and power. 

"By the name idol," writes a contributor to 
" Chambers's Encyclopsedia," " is meant an image 
intended to represent a divinity, and to be adored 
as such. The act of worshiping such an object 
as a divinity, is called idolatry," etc. Idolatry — 
in its normal integrity, is distinctly and posi- 
tively to be defined as the practice of divine wor- 
ship, by means of idols, which, in such case, are 
reminisce ntial or emblematic of divinity, but 
when — as, for example, in its vitiated or corrupt 
state, during the latter epoch of its historj^ among 
the ancient Greeks and Eomans, it came to be 
so far diverted from its original intent as to make 
the idol the object of worship, instead of rifierely its 
representative or index, it is literally and strictly 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 135 

idolatry — as this writer avers, but then it ceases 
to be a divine cultus, in the true sense and legiti- 
mate use of the term. 

Image-worship — it is justly asserted by the 
learned Creuzer, as may be seen in his " Sj^m- 
bolik und Mythologie der Alten Yolker, beson- 
ders der Griechen," is of great antiquity. Even 
among nations the most distinguished for their 
civilization and intellectual eminence, and as fa- 
mous in history as they have been celebrated in 
song, symbols of divinity, or deific powers, were 
devoutly recognized : and held more or less sa- 
cred, in the multifarious and prominently sali- 
ent objects of nature, either in their rude primi- 
tive forms, or as they had been modified and 
illustrated b}^ the patient efforts or the esthetic 
skill of the fine arts. 

The belief also has largely prevailed among 
rude, illiterate peoples, that the gods presented 
mankind with their idols or images from heaven : 
hence called diipetes — sent from heaven. Espe- 
cially were aerolites, known as baituloi, viewed in 
this imposing light. In this extraordinary and 
exceptional division of idolatry, are included 
holy stones : deific symbols ; as, that of Pessinus 
in Galatia, sacred to Cybele; that of the sun- 
god, Elagabalus, in Syria; that of the temple of 
Apollo, at Delphi ; and that — ^to mention but one 
more, among many others still unnoticed, the 
famous black-stone, in the Caabah, at Mecca. 



136 HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 

Stones of this sacred character and distinguished 
rank, it was a very common custom to anoint 
with holy oil : thus consecrating them to the 
service of some deity, an instance of which — 
recorded in the Book of Genesis, xxviii. 10-19, 
the reader will, no doubt, readily call to mind, 
among his reminiscences in the checkered life of 
the patriarch Jacob. 

The dedication : with solemn liturgic rites, of 
temples, altars, shrines, groves, trees, fountains, 
rivers, persons — on any account, deemed re- 
markable ; animals, noted for their grotesque 
forms, their useful or malignant qualities ; stars, 
meteors, the elements : as they were formerly 
defined ; the seasons, the fruits and cereal 
grains, and, in short, any substance or object, 
that particularly elicited wonder, terror, admi- 
ration, gratitude, etc., implied the idea that the 
gods, whom they represented or typified, would 
especially sanctify and bless them by their hal- 
lowed, though invisible presence : they were 
emphatically idols, and the devout veneration 
manifested toward them, on account of their 
emblematical and hieratic import, was, there- 
fore, idolatry, in its legitimate and normal sense : 
the idol being simply the appropriate — often 
time-honored, medium in the observance of a 
divine and saving cultus. 

According to Jamblicus — whose views on this 
subject, essentially accord with the opinions. 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. I37 

advanced in the foregoing paragraphs, all idols, 
or images, made and set apart for religious 
purposes, were, in some degree, deemed to be 
divine; yet only in so far — of course, as they 
were thought to reflect and symbolize the di- 
vinity of the gods, to whom they were sacred, 
and who — it was confidently believed, contem- 
plated them with peculiar complacency, and 
cherished with a partial and affectionate care. 

The practice, which has largely prevailed in 
all heathen countries, and which is still pre- 
dominant wherever heathenism is the recog- 
nized religion of a people, in the habit of 
idolizing objective nature, and exalting it to the 
rank of symbols of divinity, had its origin in 
the idea, that all the separate parts of the visible 
creation, are really so many divine elements, or 
integrants of the Supreme Being, which — being 
considered a unity, compose a universal deific 
whole, or Godheads thus really constituting 
pantheism. When the religious instincts of man- 
kind assumed this type of divine worship — 
which is philosophic rather than plebeian in its 
character, it was, in a great degree, of a sen- 
suous, or unreasoning nature, both in the ob- 
servance of the sacred mysteries, as well as 
in the routine of the public cultus. Hence, 
the poetic sentiments of devotion thus greatly 
predominating, the religion of mankind, at 

that stage of their development, was emphati- 

12* 



138 HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 

cally the religion of the imagination and the 
passions ! 

Speaking of the materials and figures, in which 
idols are represented, Webster observes, " They 
are usually statues or images, carved out of v^ood 
or stone, or formed of metals, particularly of sil- 
ver or gold." To this "Websterian statement, 
may be added that earthen images, cast or 
moulded, according to the attractive mj^steries 
of the plastic art, have always played a promi- 
nent part in idol-material. Besides, I may re- 
mark, that while civilized nations have resorted 
to the precious metals for the purpose of illus- 
trating and magnifying the science of sacred 
symbolism, barbarous peoples have never ad- 
vanced their taste, or their skill in the delicate 
and pious art of idoliechnic, beyond the more 
humble use or inferior worth of wood and stone, 
in the observance of their idolatrous devotions, 
as it is only in a refined, social condition of man- 
kind, that the love of the beautiful, or the desire 
for w^hat is rare and valuable, can develop and 
difiuse itself. 

Idolatry — as it appears from the foregoing dis- 
quisition, being thus a symbol or index, in a vis- 
ible object, of an invisible divinity or god, it is 
not unreasonable, certainly, to acknowledge the 
supernatural insignia, by appropriate acts of hom- 
age, and lively demonstrations of gratitude. For 
not the wood, or stone, or metal ; the baked or 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 139 

manipulated clay, considered merely as a species 
or form of matter, is worshiped or held to he 
sacred, hut only in so far as it is reminiscent of 
divinity, is it to he esteemed and treated as holy, 
and worthy of the care and respect of rational 
heings. In such a practice, it will he readily per- 
ceived that there is nothing more strange or ob- 
jectionahle than there is in the custom to decorate 
our parlors with statues and paintings, commem- 
orative of our ancestors, or the deceased and ten- 
derly loved memhers of our families ; for we do 
not wish to convey the idea hy such expressions 
of an eminently humane and natural sentiment, 
that the canvas on the wall; the moulded or cast 
bust ; or the embroidered memento of a favorite 
cat or dog, implies divine worship of these me- 
morials of the dead, or is declarative that their 
souls animate their images or emblems, represent- 
ing forms and features — in symbolized humanity, 
of course, once so familiar ; so dear ; and now so 
sacred to us ! 

The heathens, being mentally essentially en- 
dowed like ourselves, were not less reasonable in 
the use of images than we are. !N'one of them — I 
venture to assert, unless the very dregs of society, 
have ever been so profoundly ignorant, or so con- 
summately stupid, as to fall down before a piece 
of carved, or sculptured wood or stone; cast metal; 
or any other material appropriated to idol-uses, 
and worship it ; pray to it ; or solemnly dedicate 



140 HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 

themselves to it as to a divinity. They knew quite 
as well as we do, that religious worship is an act, 
appertaining not to " dumb idols," but to divinity, 
or supersensual entities. It is, therefore, high 
time that the heathens should be no longer slan- 
dered in a body, neither by the narrow-minded 
Old-Testament prophet, nor by the misnamed di- 
vine, claiming a place, and playing a role — often, 
alas, a false one, under the Gospel. Indeed, I 
hesitate not to affirm, that no intelligent heathen 
— and there have always been plenty such, ac- 
cording to the undoubted evidence of history, 
has ever — in the indiscriminating and, hence, 
unjustifiable language of the Psalmist, " served 
graven images." I will only add that — though 
the heathens may have lacked siceet Psalmists, 
they can boast many great and good men ; men, 
who — without belonging to the Chosen People^ 
were — I doubt not, " after God's own heart." 

[N'othing is more absurd or reprehensible in 
Christian ethics, than to treat the heathens with 
aversion and disrespect, as if they were a race of 
human beings radically distinct from ourselves. 
Our ancestors too, at some period in the past, 
were heathens! Heathenism was the primeval state 
of mankind, and both Judaism and Christianity, 
are the natural products and ultimate phases of 
heathenism, varied and adapted to presumptively 
new and improved stages of development. It is 
only, or chiefly, through heathen channels, that 



HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 141 

we can have any correct, nay, any knowledge at 
all, of the hoary past ; any just appreciation, or 
rational ideas, of man's progressive advancement 
from the rude savage to the polished civilized 
state of nature. !Nor should we have attained to 
the present eminence of knowledge and the arts, 
if we had not had heathen foundations upon which 
to rear the fair and spacious temple of science. In 
short, we are the lineal descendants of the often 
unjustly, as well as foolishly despised and hasely 
calumniated heathens ! We could only then at- 
tain to the matured, manly state, after they had 
passed through the earlier and more trying pe- 
riods of helpless infancy, and a struggling, tenta- 
tive youth. Besides, their state — whatever may 
be peculiar to it, either to attract or repel our 
sympathies, was not only foreknown by the 
Creator, but virtually sanctioned ; for if he had 
condemned it, or deemed it essentially adverse 
to his plan of human destiny, he would — it is 
reasonable to suppose, have ordained a humanity, 
strictly responsive to his approval : their mode 
of development through the complex media of 
polytheism and idolatry, is, therefore eminently 
normal, and the sins which can be justly laid to 
their account, are substantially the same as those 
which many of the rest of mankind commit daily 
and hourly : the sins of an abused, and, hence, 
perverted free-agency. 

The heathens — to instance those, with whom 



142 HEATHEN IDOLATRY. 

the Christian reader may be supposed to be most 
familiar, known and distinguished as the Greeks 
and Romans, are deservedly celebrated in all civ- 
ilized countries, for the rich and splendid classic 
literature, which owes its origin and just fame to 
the patrons and the devotees of idolatry, and — 
without the use of which, in our collegiate insti- 
tutions, students could not : even down to recent 
times, pass through a complete literary curriculum.; 
could not aspire to the reputation of thoroughly 
learned men ; could not figure before the Public, 
in the proud and enviable attitude of graduates ! 
It must seem strange to bigots and the habitual 
defamers of the heathens, to learn that heathens, 
in '' their blindness," should possess a literature 
so varied ; so extensive ; and often so inimitable 
in style and profundity, as to challenge competi- 
tion ; while the idea, of possibly surpassing it, 
must be considered, at once, as decidedly chi- 
merical and presumptuous ! 



MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 



The subject, embracing the salvation of the 
human race, is of paramount interest, and, there- 
fore, though I have largely treated of Christ as 
Savior, in my work, entitled — " The Teachings of 
Providence, or New Lessons on Old Subjects," 
he will be prominently brought to our notice in 
this Paper, as I shall here exhibit the great 
dogma of Soteriology in an entirely new light : 
a circumstance, which will, consequently^, place 
Christ in an unusual category of relations, and 
greatly alter our conceptions of the nature of a 
savior, as well of the office of redemption gen- 
erally. 

We are extensively and habitually accustomed 
to speak of Christ as emphatically the Savior, 
and to consider him to be the only savior that 
has ever been, or ever will be ; but such appre- 
hension of his mission, is — I conceive, totally 
erroneous, and, therefore, no longer tenable, as 
I shall endeavor to demonstrate in the sequel. 
Such announcement is — I admit, somewhat start- 
ling, and will, no doubt, fill the minds of some 

143 



144 MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 

persons with alarm ; of others, with wrath ; of 
all orthodox people — if not with unqualified dis- 
gust, at least with profound surprise and ominous 
forebodings. But " truth is mighty and must 
prevail." I will, therefore, only add, that I owe 
too much to Christ the Savior, to speak lightly of 
him, or — led by unfriendly feelings toward him, 
knowingly to derogate an iota from his proper, 
divine position and significance among mankind ! 

That Christ — as appears both from the unmis- 
takable testimony of history, and the known 
economy of Divine providence, cannot be a uni- 
versal savior, is as clear as that two and three 
are ^yq^ or that a part is less than the whole. 
Facts, however, must illustrate and confirm the 
proposition, and, consequently, decide the ques- 
tion. 

First, Christ cannot be the Savior of mankind, 
whose existence was anterior to his birth, and 
who cannot, consequently, have had any knowl- 
edge of him, or stood in any soterial relation to 
him. Whence it follows, of course, that they 
cannot have believed in him; followed him as 
his disciples ; and be saved by him as their 
savior ! ^NTot only lived and died myriad mil- 
lions of human beings from the hypothetical 
Adamic era — dating back about six thousand 
years from the appearance of Christ in Judea, 
who — it is to be taken for granted, had never 
heard of him, but during millennial ages pre- 



MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. I45 

viously to that time, human beings had existed 
and flourished upon the globe ; propagated the 
race; rejoiced, mourned; gave up the ghost, 
and returned to dust, without consciousness of 
Christ, or the Gospel, or the fruition of a Chris- 
tian redemption ! It is clear then, that if they had 
a savior, that Christ was not that savior ; and 
that, therefore, Christ cannot — with any sem- 
blance of propriety, be designated as the savior 
of that part of our race, which existed prior to 
the date of his soterial mission among men. 

Second, Christ cannot be the savior of any 
part of mankind that — existing subsequently to 
his advent, has never been benefited by his 
teaching, or even, in fact, learned any thing at 
all, either of his extraordinary history or his 
momentous mission. More than eighteen cen- 
turies have elapsed since the introduction of 
Christianity upon the earth, but the vast ma- 
jority of peoples and nations upon the globe, 
are either still heathens, or, at least, live outside 
of the Church ! How then — on the plain, self- 
evident principles of common sense, can Christ 
be a savior where he does not and never did, save ? 
That he is intended to save all men, is a pleasing 
idea rather than an earnest, in the present phase 
of things, that it will be realized. In any event, 
it is eminently remarkable that almost two thou- 
sand years should be sufiered to elapse : the 
peril, of innumerable multitudes being forever 

13 



146 MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 

lost, being — as we are taught, imminent, without 
any rescue having been made, or — in many in- 
stances, even attempted, at all commensurate : 
on any sound canons of dialectics, with the dire 
urgency of the case. To say in explanation of 
the apparent anomaly or mystery, that " God's 
ways are not like our ways," can no longer be 
supposed to hold good in opposition to the gen- 
erally approved and decisive dictates of impartial 
reason, verified by undoubted facts, patent and 
convincing to every sane mind : human reason 
too, I remark, is one of God's ways ! 

It is most singular, indeed, that mankind should 
have been upon the earth so many ages, multi- 
plying to innumerable multitudes, and die, before 
a savior in the person of Jesus Christ, seems to 
have been thought of. Hence, if they needed 
his atonement to save them from perdition, what 
became of them ? And what is no less singular, 
is the fact, that when, at last, he came, he came 
but to a class of a single people — " to the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel," and was ignomin- 
ously rejected by that people ; the chosen people 
too of God ! Why, I may humbly venture further 
to ask, was his mission : so absolutely necessary 
to our salvation, as it is claimed to be, not co- 
eval with the consummation of the Fall of Man, 
that he might thus, at once, have repaired the 
ghastly breach, made, by that tragic incident, 
in the lapsed human soul ? Besides, instead of 



MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 147 

but one savior, why might there not have been 
many saviors, and a plurality of redemptions, 
according to the spiritual necessities of the differ- 
ent tribes and peoples of mankind ? Such inqui- 
ries : if they cannot all be satisfactorily answered, 
clearly lead to the conviction, that a savior, put- 
ting forth supernatural efforts, to ensure the 
attainment of salvation, is not implied in the 
founder of the Christian religion, and that sote- 
rial methods of a strictly and solely ethical kind, 
having their origin emphatically within the 
sphere of human volition, and in independent 
self-spontaneity — as will appear in the next para- 
graph, entirely suffice properly to guide and 
ameliorate the life, and thus adequately and 
promptly secure the high destiny of man ! 

First, there are more saviors than one. There 
has never been a nation, except, perhaps, when, 
it was in its most embryotic stage of social life, 
that has not had its leader, sage, hero, or savior, 
in an ethnically restricted sense, " the salt of the 
earth," and " the light of the world." This is 
one of the chief ways in which the Creator gov- 
erns the great body of his children, and supplies 
their moral, social, and intellectual wants ; or — as 
St. Paul writes, " Is above all, and through all, and 
in all." Thus, the Hindus have had their Menu 
and their Chrishna; the Buddhists, their Arddha 
Chiddi ; the Persians, their Zoroaster : the Ethi- 
opians, their Mithras ; the Chinese, their Confu- 



148 MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 

cius and their Fo, or Fohi ; the Jews their Mo- 
ses; the Arabians, their Mohammed; the Egyp- 
tians, their Menes ; the Greeks, their Homer, Soc- 
rates, Plato, etc. ; the Romans, their l^uma, 
Cicero, Seneca, etc. ; the ancient Scandinavians, 
their Odin and Baldur; the Germans, their Yel- 
eda and their Scalds ; the Celts, their Druids ; 
the Peruvians, their Manco, or Manco Capac ; the 
Mexicans, their Taotl, etc. ; besides thousands 
and tens of thousands other lights in the dark 
paths of life ; other preachers of virtue ; other 
assertors of right; in short, other ameliorators — 
saviors, of their people ; nay, sons of God, ac- 
cording to Old-Testament precedent !* 

The foregoing soterial method, in behoof of 
man's happiness here, being strictly confined 
to human instrumentalities, objections may be 
.raised, that saviors, simply human, having no 
claim to divinity, or power to perform miracles, 
are incompetent to expiate Adam's Fall, imputed 
to his descendants : a feat — it will likely be af- 
firmed, which he alone can accomplish, and that, 
therefore, the world must be Christianized before 
it can be saved ! The inference, which is here 



* Christ : I wish it to be borne in mind, is pre-eminently the 
Savior, who will, therefore, no doubt, in the course of Divine 
providence, be finally the universal ameliorator, or sole savior 
of mankind. For whether there is original sin or not, the 
world, nevertheless, needs a savior as emphatically "the way, 
the truth, and the life," of the erring, sinful, dying man! 



MANV PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. I49 

deduced from the assumed Adamic Fall, is false, 
and for this simple and most cogent reason, that 
there never was an Adam — such as the Scriptures 
mention, who figured as the ancestor of the hu- 
man race; and that, therefore, he cannot have 
committed a sin, which has entailed a fatal cor- 
ruption upon his hypothetical offspring — the 
human race. Hence, there heing no original sin 
to be expiated, there is no need of an original- 
sin-expiating savior; for it is plain, he cannot 
expiate what does not exist. "Whence it is clear, 
that the merely human saviors — -just mentioned, 
are fully capable of instructing, reforming, train- 
ing, and furthering the true and abiding welfare 
of their fellow-beings, both by their examples ; 
their precepts ; and the diff"usion of useful and 
ennobling knowledge. History is replete with in- 
stances of good, great, and illustrious heathens, 
Jews, and Mohammedans, and the morals of those 
peoples, among them, who have attained to the 
rank and blessings of civilization, are perhaps 
not a whit inferior to the morals of those who 
profess the teachings of Christianity, and boast 
prerogatives, foolishly supposed to be found 
either exclusively, or, at least, only in an eminent 
and, therefore, available degree, within its hal- 
lowed pale. 

Second, beside the bare, unaided human 
agency, put forth in the development and eleva- 
tion of the human race, above alluded to, the 

13* 



150 MANF PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 

Creator has made the moral capabilities of man 
a potent factor in his glorious destiny, as is im- 
pressively and explicitly taught in the Epistle of 
St. Paul to the Romans, ii. 14-15, where we find 
that man is not ruthlessly cast upon this fair but 
often perilous world, without a guide, a monitor, 
ever present, ever speaking in the name of God 
— " the law, written in his heart," to teach him 
what is to be expected of him, and a judge, 
clothed in the solemn attributes of a minister of 
God, called conscience, enthroned in his breast, and 
watching over its observance with a sleepless as- 
siduity, thus preserving it inviolate by the cer- 
tain and unerring dispensation of rewards and 
punishments. In this grand ethic institution — 
this bosom-school of divinity, is high soterial 
training, is salvation, at once, unmistakable and 
unquestionable, in its final and admirable re- 
sults. Hence the thought that the heathens 
are not left to their fate un cared for, or " with- 
out a witness" from God, teaching them both 
how to live and what to hope, is as consoling as 
it is delightful to the reflecting and philanthropic 
mind ! 

The appropriate as well as eminently pithy 
words of the Gentile-Apostle, recorded in the 
Epistle to the Romans, iii. 29, and absolutely de- 
cisive in favor of the salvation of the heathens 
outside of the pale of the Christian Church, will 
conclude the brief disquisition of the present 



MANY PEOPLES, MANY SAVIORS. 151 

paper. " Is God" — he writes, " the God of the 
Jews only? Is he not also the God of the Gen- 
tiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also !"* 

■^ The word gentile is a common noun, and should, like the 
word heathen, be written with a small initial : it is absurd to 
observe any longer the heretofore existing distinction. 



HEAVEN. 



The term Heaven, embraces a branch of litera- 
ture of great and permanent interest as well as 
large import, and, therefore, a closer investiga- 
tion and a more ample illustration of it, will not 
likely be deemed either useless, or untimely. 
The knowledge, which people generally have of 
it at present, is vague and, consequently, not very 
satisfactory. Though my acquaintance with that 
paradisiacal region, is, indeed, by no means, very 
extensive or even — under the circumstances, es- 
pecially lucid, I will, nevertheless, endeavor to 
set it in a clearer and more definite light, by a 
somewhat critical and careful sifting of the con- 
fused and often puerile notions, which have, here- 
tofore, seriously marred and mystified the sub- 
ject. 

According to its primary sense, heaven is evi- 
dently a place, and, therefore, it must have boun- 
daries, and consist of material objects; in short, 
be a landscape. Viewed in this light, it would 

152 



HEAVEN. 153 

be properly included under the title of descrip- 
tive geography, and its situation be definable in a 
manner similar to the description or location of 
places, according to their latitudes and longi- 
tudes, or their astronomical position. For any- 
thing to be a place and yet not occupy a particu- 
lar point in space, is too ridiculous to deserve 
further notice. 

Jesus expressly teaches his disciples to say 
when they should pray : " Our Father which art 
in heaven." God being in heaven, is, hence — 
by a figure of speech known as prosopopoeia, 
called Heaven. St. Luke, xv. 18, 21, also corrob- 
orates the use of this figurative mode of lan- 
guage in this acceptation. According to this ap- 
prehension of the subject, heaven seems, at first 
blush, to possess a most ample territory, and to 
be even co-extensive with the universe ; for — 
among other attributes of God, he is said to be 
infinite or omnipresent. Hence, he being every- 
where present, and, at the same time in heaven, 
it follows that heaven must be everywhere. Is 
this likely to be the case ? Can any well-regu- 
lated mind have any rational idea of a being that 
has no limits, or is at least in size equal to the 
utmost boundary of the universe ? The idea — 
in my estimation, is eminently grotesque and ab- 
surd. 'Nor is it — I conceive, at all necessary to 
the manifestation of any of the attributes of the 
Deity. To this end — I have no doubt, his un- 



154 HEAVEN. 

bounded prescience and omnipotent power are 
fully adequate. Besides, God reigns through 
laws, everywhere unalterably inherent in his 
works, and inflexibly executing his will, thus 
clearly rendering his personal presence needless. 

Heaven is also pre-eminently a state, and, as 
such, is of paramount significance to us, import- 
ing the enjoyment of exquisite bliss, or supreme 
happiness. A delightful habitation, destined for 
man's future existence, would, therefore, avail 
him but little, if he lacked the fruition of a vir- 
tuous and pious life. To reap well, we must sow 
good seed, and to have any just claim to the re- 
ward of virtue, our lives must be virtuous. 
Faith, however orthodox it may be, is not 
enough to the attainment of this end, nor will 
Divine grace be vouchsafed to him, who — instead 
of diligently and wisely employing his God-given 
" pound," foolishly and wickedly" lays it up in a 
napkin." Indeed, without the performance of 
useful work, on the part of the candidate for 
heaven — as is evident, for example, from the Par- 
able of the Vineyard, and on the plain and cogent 
principles of common sense, it would be in vain 
for him to expect remuneration, or — in other 
words, reward. Heaven, if it is what it is intel- 
ligently anticipated to be, must rest on an ethic 
basis : the soul's adaptability to happiness must 
be satisfied, and this end is achieved only under 
the benign influence of conscience, prompting to 



HEAVEN. 155 

the faithful and indefatigable observance of 
God's holy laws. Kay, it is not sufficient to ex- 
claim ^' Lord, Lord," to " enter into the kingdom 
of heaven," but the aspirant for such exalted 
honors, must '' do the will of his Father in hea- 
ven." 

The idea that is largely entertained of the 
beatitude of heaven, is, that it is always the 
same ; that it is composed of definite qualities as 
well as quantities of enjoyment; and that both 
are, forever and unalterably, the same. N^o con- 
ception of heaven — it is evident, could be more 
supremely ridiculous and absurd than such a one. 
A heaven permanently circumscribed in its lim- 
its and fixedly stereotyped in its measure and 
kind of bliss, would be a prison rather than an 
elysium; a state of weariness and languor, in- 
stead of one of rapture and fond anticipation ! 
E"o, no, heaven — not to belie its splendid pres- 
tige, or annihilate all faith in future happiness, 
must be still responsive to the instincts and yearn- 
ings of humanity ; must be, more or less, reflex- 
ive of the existing nature and manifestations of 
human life ; must positively involve progressive- 
ness of the soul in approximation toward God, 
or — in other words, toward the bright goal of 
its high destiny, and ever ameliorating felicity. 
Its scenes must vary; its joys be diverse; while 
its pursuits — in so far only as they possess the 
zest of novelty, will be ever fresh and ever at- 



156 J^^^A VEN. 

tractive by suitable and timely changes. There 
cannot be — it is impossible ! a heaven ; nay, not 
the faintest shadow of a heaven, where monotony 
and tedium reign, let the occupation, the joys, 
the glory be what they may. Variety there — as 
here, will ever be : according to the adage, " the 
spice of life." 

In the course of a conversation with an old 
gentleman, in which the Christian's life here and 
hereafter was contrasted, he told the writer that 
w^hen w^e should be in heaven, our happiness 
\vould be supreme, and we should find ample 
compensation for all the manifold cares and ills 
of the present life, by the delightful occupation 
of " singing hymns for ever." Being asked. If 
he did not think that such ceaseless hymnic exer- 
cise would at length be fatiguing and blunt — if 
not destroy, all pleasurable sensations, he an- 
swered with much fervor and energy : " It will 
be sweet there, ay, celestial, to sing, to sing ; yes, 
forever, to sing !" I at once took him for a piti- 
able dunce, incapable of a common-sense view of 
heaven. Myriad Christians have no more ra- 
tional or exalted conceptions of heaven than 
this infatuated man : a heaven, not worth pos- 
sessing, and repugnant to all sane aspirations. 

Christ represents heaven — in the sense of a 
happy state, under the image of a feast, Luke, 
xvi. 22 : " And it came to pass, that the beggar 
died, and was carried by the angels into Abra- 



HE A VEN. 157 

ham's bosom." By the phrase Abraham^ s bosom, 
the learned commentator Clarke, writes : " An 
allusion is made to the custom at Jewish feasts, 
of persons reclining on their left elbows on a 
couch, when the person whose head came near 
the breast of the other, was said to lie in his 
bosom.'' Hence the phrase Abraham's bosom., is 
to be considered a mode of expression common 
among the Jews in the Savior's time, to denote 
heaven or the celestial paradise. Such an idea 
of the place of future happiness, and the method 
of realizing it, was decidedly sensuous, and had 
its basis in the low, animal pleasures of the gas- 
tronomic art : a conception of heavenly delight, 
which is but little better than the sensual grati- 
fications, awaiting the true mussulman in the 
Mohammedan paradise, and, therefore — it seems, 
unworthy of a nation, who boasted to be the 
Chosen People of God. Christ, who thus founded 
the Parable of Lazarus and the Eich Man, upon 
the culinary, or symposiac indulgences of his 
countrymen, doubtless simply accommodated 
himself, in the use of this phraseology, to re- 
ceived opinion, or, probably, mere mode of typi- 
fying a greater by a less enjoyment. 

In his First Epistle to the Corinthians, xv. 50- 
53, and in his First Epistle to the Thessalonians, 
iv. 13-18, St. Paul makes the following novel 
and momentous disclosures in reference to a 
future life, and the abode of departed happy 

14 



158 HEAVEN. 






spirits : First, there is " a kingdom of God 
which is designed for the habitation and use of 
the Christians, and which — as will presently 
more fully appear, is located "in the air;" sec- 
ond, at the second advent of Christ, and " at the 
last trump, or trump of God," the dead that 
"sleep in Jesus," shall be raised incorruptible; 
third, the living — who are entitled to the name 
Christians, will undergo such preparatory meta- 
morphosis, as shall adapt them to their future, 
aerial, and felicitous abode : they " shall be 
changed" instantly : "in a moment, in the 
twinkling of an eye;" fourth, all Christians, 
whether they are still alive or are already dead, 
shall — on that solemn and august day " be caught 
up together in the clouds, to meet the Lord in 
the air ;" and fifth, the union of Christ and his 
followers shall be permanent — they will " ever be 
with the Lord."* 

How such an aerial abode, as the one just de- 
scribed, can be a heaven for beings clothed with 
bodies, however glorified or exalted they may be, 
where there does not seem to be any provision 
for a foothold ; any fixed point of support ; and 
where, nevertheless, the attraction of gravitation 
must be supposed to be still in full force, is a 

*For further information on this absorbing subject, my 
Work, entitled — " The Teachings of Providence, or New 
Lessons on Old Subjects," is respectfully recommended to the 
reader's attention. 



HEAVEN. 159 

problem of wMch Euclid appears never to have 
thought, and which ^N'ewton — it is certain, never 
solved. But why should not heaven — as well 
as the earth, have its enigmas and its mysteries? 
Besides, the inmates of this heaven, thus still 
having bodies, notwithstanding — as has been just 
suggested, they maybe extremely subtile and ethe- 
real, they are, undoubtedly, organisms and must 
need food : whence is this obtained, and of what 
is it composed ? Even the Olympic gods of classic 
Greece, could not do without their nectar and 
ambrosia. If the Apostle had been a little more 
explicit on this subject, it would have been very 
acceptable to poor mortals, especially such as are 
not of the clairvoyant school. Finally, the distance 
to this Pauline heaven, cannot be very great, as 
the atmosphere extends, at most, but several scores 
of miles into stellar space, and the ghosts there 
may often descend to the earth ; hover over our 
domicils ; witness our good or evil fortune ; and 
fondly sympathize with our destiny ! 

The author of the Book, called " The Revela- 
tion of St. John the Divine," announces a very 
different kind of a place, as the future heaven of 
the redeemed, from that of the Gentile-Apostle. 
The favored inhabitants of his heaven, dwell upon 
terra Jirma, and are provided with plenty of food 
and drink, while they are surrounded with objects 
of preternatural grandeur and inimitable beauty. 
This florid and somewhat ambiguous writer — 



160 HEAVEN. 

noticed more at length on this topic, in my Work, 
just referred to, assigns to "those whose names 
are written in the book of life," Revelation, xx. 
11-15, as their future spirit-home, xxi. 1-27 ; xxii. 
1-5, the " New Jerusalem :" a city of gold and 
precious stones, " coming down from God out of 
heaven." In this architectural wonder, replete 
with paradisiacal delights, and celestial splendor, 
nothing that is impure can enter. One of its most 
remarkable features is, that in it are found both 
the river and the tree of life, while Jesus, " the 
Lamb," instead of the sun, is its resplendent and 
never-waning light, etc. 

At first blush, the idea of locating the heaven 
of the Christians in a single city, and in Palestine 
too, itself a mere speck upon the globe, appears 
eminently ludicrous, but a very slight revision of 
the case, will soon reconcile all seeming incon- 
gruities. To this end, it is only necessary to call 
to mind that when the Apostle indited this inter- 
esting and decidedly paramount part of the Apoc- 
alypse, the Christians were but few in number, 
and could all easily reside in a single city of even 
very moderate dimensions. Besides, at the sec- 
ond advent of Christ: which was momentarily 
expected, the gates of the 'New Jerusalem — this 
emphatically Palestinian heaven, would be — in 
effect, literally closed against all further ingress, 
and the number of its population, probably, for 
ever fixed. 



EEA VEN. 161 

Such then, briefly, are the apostolic views of 
the Christians' heaven. In so weighty, nay, mo- 
mentous a matter, it is clear, there ought to be no 
discrepancy of teaching among men, who — it is 
largely conceded, were inspired, and God-sent, 
but there is a marked, nay, almost lamentable 
discrepancy, which a closer criticism and a more 
thorough apprehension of the subject, may, per- 
haps, hereafter succeed in reconciling. 

In conclusion, I say, O that all might sweetly 
hope, ay, happily believe what Shirley in softly 
flowing rhythm and soul-elating lore, thus pithily 
indites : 

" Heaven's the perfection of all that can 
Be said or thought, riches, delight, or harmony, 
Health, beauty ; and all these not subject to 
The waste of time, but in their height eternal !" 



THE END. 



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